A Spiritual Diablog

Judging Others’ Choices. Post #4

2005-10-26T20:33:00.000-04:00

If I were him, I would have acted differently. If I were her, I would never have chosen to do that.

This is the essential thought process by which we judge others.

Yet surely if you were him or her, then “you” would no longer be you. Unless you’re a member of the Holy Trinity, you don’t get to be more than one person at a time.

Because you assume that if you were in the other person’s place, you would act differently; or that you would never have gotten yourself into that position to begin with and, therefore, this other person must also have been able to act differently – well, we’re just not reasoning correctly when we think along such lines.

All we’re really saying is that we would never have done such-and-such under any circumstances. And we may not even really know that much.

We can’t plausibly make ourselves the measure of others.

Free Choice and Judgment. Post #3

2005-10-24T14:18:00.000-04:00

I appreciate the diversity of viewpoints and the thought that people put behind their comments to this blog. I started to write a reply to one of you in the comments section of my last post, and then realized that the comment and my reply is a post in itself. It summarizes a lot of what’s been said so far, and at the same time looks at how free choice bears on the issue of passing judgment. Lucy, along with a number of other commentators, favors the idea that when we do wrong, it’s primarily a matter of free choice rather than primarily a matter of limited moral knowledge or awareness.

Lucy: “Paul, I am not trying to pass judgement on anyone. God makes the ultimate judgement on each and every soul. Judge not lest ye be judged. You are talking about the grey area between good and bad choices, or that is what it seems to me. Maybe we just understand things differently.”

Paul: I’m saying that it’s impossible to prove that we do or do not have free moral choice (or free will in any other aspect of our lives.) I'm also acknowledging that most people who’ve posted comments, myself included, do feel that we have a measure of freedom in moral decision making. However, the prevailing view seems to recognize strong influences that bear on how we come to arrive at moral decisions, to the effect that our degree of choice is far from completely free. My personal view is that the degree appears highly limited.

If, instead of seeing moral choice as quite limited, we see it as perhaps not perfectly free, but nearly so, then this conduces to judging other persons, and not just their actions. We view them as doing evil not because “they know not what they do,” but because, although they have full moral awareness, they choose evil. This allows us to blame them deeply as persons – to judge them. At the same time, it allows us to see ourselves as highly virtuous free-choosers of the good. All this represents a big payoff for the ego.

So when, as in your previous comment, somebody says something like, "I know that there are some sicko's out there that are so weak that they can't make a good choice," it sounds highly judgmental. Like you say, you’re not passing ultimate judgment in the sense of deciding who’s going to heaven and hell. But when the Bible says to judge not, not to throw stones, etc., these lines aren’t meant to dissuade Christians from trying to wrestle Jesus Christ out of his throne on Judgment Day! That’d hafta be really hard!

I think the lines are telling us not to pass moral judgment on other persons; not to consider ourselves experts on their minds, their hearts, their souls, what they’ve been through in life – not only in the outer world, but also in the private world where they developed whatever sense they came to have of themselves in relation to others. Just because I wouldn’t or couldn’t have done what some other person did doesn’t give me insight that he or she freely chose it. We are not to consider ourselves the measure of others. Judge not.

Btw, I’m casting no stones in your direction, Lucy, and appreciate your comments and patience. And I only know something about ego because I have one…

Free Choice and Morality. Post #2

2005-10-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

Morality Demands Free Choice

Some of you believe that morality is possible only if we have complete freedom of choice. Examples:

Gangadhar: “Without free will, no opportunity for choices between right and wrong exist. Creatures without free will cannot have ethics because they have no choice.”

Kate: “As Gangadhar said, without some acknowledgement of… free will, how could there be any ethics?

"It would be crazy then, to hold anyone responsible for their good or bad acts. It would make no sense to have prisons, or the educational system for that matter. Everything would be relative. Why not still have slavery? Why shouldn't Hitler rule the world? I know I'm oversimplifying here, but do you see what I mean?

"I just can't accept that point of view. But I'm curious to know what you think about that aspect of personal responsibility.”

Morality Does Not Demand Free Choice

Here’s how morality is understood when the main factor behind how we behave is viewed as our degree of awareness of self in relation to God – or, conversely, our level of ignorance concerning this matter. (If you’re a Buddhist or have Buddhist leanings, feel free to substitute “enlightenment” for “awareness of self in relation to God.”)

In brief:

That which is moral or ethical is that which does good. That which is immoral or unethical is that which does harm.

The less ignorant we are, the more we do good. The more ignorant we are, the more we do harm.

I think that those who view free choice as the quintessence of morality must still have some experience of moral ignorance vs. moral awareness as leading them to do harm vs. good. All of us remember past occasions of having done wrong where we learned something from the experience and wouldn’t do it again because of what we learned.

Whichever theory is correct, or more correct – whether we do good/harm from out of enlightenment/ignorance or from out of free choice -- does not make the good that we do better or the harm that we do worse. Acting well from out of diminished ignorance is a good thing. Acting well from out of free choice is a good thing, if that’s how it works.

Problems with Morality as Free Choice

However, one problem with the idea that we make perfectly free moral choices is that it makes it easy for our egos to get involved. We may compare ourselves to others. It makes it easy to congratulate ourselves about how good we are, or to pass judgment against others (or ourselves). Because those who choose evil knowing perfectly well what they do must be evil indeed. We might even conclude that Jesus may not forgive those who choose evil knowing what they do.

Passing judgment against others as free choosers of evil makes it easy to demonize them and want to punish them. The criminal justice system is a good example. It’s founded on the idea of punishment. We have a prison system where prisoners are allowed to rape and stab other prisoners, but who cares? They’re getting what they deserve.

Criminal Justice

And what we get is a high rate of recidivism – criminals who exit the system more angry and hate-filled than before they entered it. Why? Because the idea of “teaching a lesson” to an adult in the sense of punishing him is, frankly, idiotic. It’s psychologically incorrect. Punishment may have some use in instilling a rudimentary conscience in a young child. But inmates aren’t young children who view their prison guards and wardens as parental figures whose values and mores they’re primed to internalize.

As a practical matter, what the criminal justice system ought to do is A) protect society from criminals by locking them up, and B) provide for a prison life that’s as sane and simple as possible. Let’s call it a monastic model rather than a punishment model. Instead of enraging the angry, why not give them a simple and structured life that provides opportunities for psychological, spiritual, and educational growth? Why not encourage those with the capacity to become better persons to do so?

As far as the factors we’d consider for judging and sentencing criminals goes, nothing would change. As a practical matter, whether we view free choice as illusion or reality, some criminals do, for example, “premeditate” more than others. Whether their premeditation was freely chosen or whether it was set in motion and absolutely determined by the forces that came into play at the first instant of creation – who cares?

What matters is that premeditation suggests that the criminal is a greater danger to society than someone who, for example, commits a “crime of passion.” Similarly, a serial killer poses a greater risk to society than someone who murders once in the course of a drunken brawl.

The concept of “responsibility” therefore remains a sound way to judge criminals. Not because we must believe that they are ultimately and fully responsible as free choosers of the harm they do, but because factors like forethought, mental competency, and age, are indicators of how great a propensity the criminal has to commit a criminal act again. “Responsible” now simply means “went through a conscious, reflective, and deliberative thought-process prior to commission of the crime.” That type of thought process is stable, likely to be repeated, and makes a person who thinks that way a greater danger to society regardless of whether we ever resolve the question of whether such conscious and deliberative types of thought processes are freely chosen.

Likewise, nothing changes in our view of harmful individuals, institutions, and practices such as evil dictators and slavery. We oppose them as much as ever. Nothing concerning our values and morals becomes more “relative.”

Free Choice:!!!!!!! Post #1

2005-10-17T11:19:00.000-04:00

Only since I’ve started blogging have I been aware of the special importance of free will to many Christians and Muslims, where it takes the form of “free choice” in matters pertaining to religion. It seems to me that free will is impossible to prove or disprove.

!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...

Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.

When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.

1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)

2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.

To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief

In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.

I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”

Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil

As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.

In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?

So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.

Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.

What’s It Been Like for You?

What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?

If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.

If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?

And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?

The Profundity of The Captain and Taneal

2005-10-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

“Love – love will keep us together…” Okay, the Captain and Taneal may seem an odd choice to start this post, but it’s all Mbains’ fault. I consider him my “resident atheist” since he comments here occasionally; I’ve linked to his “Silly Humans” blog on my blogroll.

MB is innocent of having referred in any way to the dynamic singing duo. But he did start a train of thought that took me there...

In a comment to my 10/3 post, he picked up on my concluding line, “I have done nothing by myself – ever.” I’d given a couple examples of what I meant, including how looking up into the branches of a tree had occasioned a particular thought. MB emphasized that it was my mind that thunk the thought. And certainly I wouldn’t deny that my own cerebral cortex is the proximate cause of whatever I think.

Literally Whole

Nevertheless, it remains true that reality, whatever it is, functions as a whole - literally. For example, the pressure in the cells of our bodies exactly counteracts earth’s atmospheric pressure: get tossed into outer space without a pressurized suit or vehicle and you’d explode. The heavy elements in our bodies necessary to life were forged in the explosions of second generation stars as the universe unfolded. Anyone knowing a lot more about science than I do could provide a lot more examples.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James broadly defines religion as our attitude toward life as a whole. Life, reality, is in fact a whole. I think it’s a good definition.

Some believe reality is a whole with two basic parts: nature, on the one hand, and on the other, God conceived as existing in complete or partial distinction from nature. But it isn’t necessary to have this belief in order to experience, as well as understand, that reality is a whole. Being an atheist is no obstacle.

Experiencing Wholeness

Take love, for example. Love brings us together (hats off to Captain and Taneal…). Love is one way in which we can experience and increase the wholeness of life, and in particular, human life. Empathy, forgiveness, compassion (which, imo, are just variations on the love theme…) – experiencing these things doesn’t require religious beliefs.

Or take the oceanic feelings that occur for many of us in relation to nature. Alone under the sky, we can directly experience something of our personal relationship to the larger reality; sense the fact that we have no existence apart from it, regardless of whether we believe that this all-inclusive reality includes a more or less distinct entity or aspect that we call God or divine.

Or take the unitive states of consciousness that can be known through contemplative prayer or meditation, and that occur spontaneously in some lives. To read descriptions of these experiences by persons who have written about them, and the techniques outlined for entering into them, is to recognize that a single basic kind of experience occurs cross-culturally. This is off the top of my head, but if I recall correctly, there’s a book by an author named Walter Stacey or Stace that’s good on demonstrating this point. I think “mysticism” was in the title, which can be a problematic; this word sometimes refers to alternative belief systems and experiential claims that many people find questionable. But Stace – also James – focuses his discussion on a clearly identifiable form of “altered state of consciousness,” and one that can have far reaching consequences for how we lead our lives.

The Plan: The Land of Live. Post #1

2005-10-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

As we went from discussing gratitude to how prayer may or may not work, some of you touched on the subject of a divine plan – the idea that even the details of what happens here on earth and in the universe is the acting out of a preconceived scheme of things established ahead of time by God. This view is commonly held among many groups of Christians, and I believe Muslims and Jews as well. The concept of a preconceived plan also frequently enters into other religious belief systems in one form or another. Here, from what I’ve seen, it often involves “destiny” – for example, in ideas of karma, reincarnation, and past lives.

Those who speak of the existence of a plan always rely heavily on some hidden or unseen aspect of it. That’s the part that explains how situations and events in this world that appear chance, chaotic, or dynamic when we just look at them, are really aspects of a well constructed – well, “intelligent design,” I suppose.

I assume that in the West, divine plan thinking represents a particular understanding of scripture; one that has apparently become well established in many organized religions. Personally, there’s a lot I don’t understand about the idea of a plan. Here are a few things that come to mind:

Filling in the Blanks

Free will: If we can act on free will, this sounds like a major area in which God didn’t plan out details in a preconceived manner. So is the idea that God planned for “free will” as a general sort of item or box in his overall scheme of things, but then left the specific contents of that box blank, so to speak? Because if God planned each of our freely made decisions in advance, it’s hard to understand how they’d be free. Wouldn’t we be the dreaded “zombies” that it’s usually said we would have to be without free choice? I do kind of wonder about that too. I mean, since we all have free will (or, don’t – but either way, it’s the same for all of us), then isn’t it hard to know if we’d really act like zombies without it? Then again, maybe we’re acting like zombies now, and don’t have any non-zombie humans around for comparison purposes…

Anyway: If God’s plan provides for free will in general but leaves the particulars up to us, are there additional “general” components to the plan? For example, did God plan out in advance exactly which way every leaf would land on the ground every autumn – or do the trees, the sun, and the wind work that out? Did God plan out which twigs every bird would select every spring for their nests, or has he allowed that blank to be filled in by the birds?

The more “blanks” there are, the more reality looks to me like an actual and ongoing act of creation and not something that was mapped out and preconceived ahead of time. Anyone familiar with creativity knows that the dynamic processes involved are very different from what it’s like to use the mind with a cleverness and intelligence that decides beforehand what the finished product will look like. If God’s a planner, for me that’s quite a different statement from saying that God is a genuine Creator.

Knowing A Lot

Yet certainly there are advantages to believing in a plan and believing that you know a lot about its unseen details. You can explain anything. The hidden part of the plan serves as a balance sheet, an unseen ledger so that any contradictions, inconsistencies, injustices, or other forms of untidiness that we observe in reality as we know it now, are only apparent.

And no one can ever prove you wrong. You can’t “go there” with someone who questions your idea of the plan to “look” and see if it’s really true. No one can check up on the accuracy of your assertions.

To give a simplistic and silly example, and yet one that operates on plan-principles, I could tell you I know about the Land of Live. (Live is evil spelled backwards…) Any time something evil happens in the world as we know it now, something very lively and twice as nice happens there.

Still, we should never do things here on purpose that are evil. For if we choose evil just to make that burst of positive energy happen in the Land of Live, to make it twice as nice for us when we finally get there, well, I hate to tell you, but that’s the one time it doesn’t work. A neutralizing energy field from that kind of thinking always crosses over into the Land of Live, so that nothing happens any different there than would have happened otherwise.

Things Unseen

I believe in the reality of things unseen myself. In fact, I tend to believe reality is mostly unknown by us in its full sweep, compass, and power.

When people around the world offer their different explanations concerning how much they know about things unseen, and in so much detail – well, frankly, the more they say they know, and the more details they give, the less convincing it sounds to me.

Anyone know how the idea of a divine plan got started?

Pls. note: the "Changes" link has been updated to the topic of Gratitude...

Gratitude and Prayer. Post #3

2005-09-30T11:31:00.000-04:00

Many people feel grateful when they pray for something and believe that their prayers have been answered. Some questions:

Are all prayers equally spiritual, religious - or realistic?

Would you pray for:

A winning lottery ticket?
A new car?
A better paying job?
Finding Mister or Miss Right?
Good health?
Averting a hurricane?
Someone else’s soul?
Inner strength?
Victory in war?
World peace?
The long term survival of our species on this planet?

Thoughts

If you believe in the power of petitionary prayer (making specific requests of God), have you thought about how it works? In what manner do our prayers influence God’s decision? Or, if we don’t feel that we can influence God, and our bottom line is, “Thy will be done,” then why are we praying?

Sometimes good things happen that we didn’t pray for and may never even have anticipated. So when we do pray for something and get it, what makes us think that we received a special answer to our prayer – as opposed to another good thing just happening?

Do some people or groups of people have more prayer power than others? Do children or elderly people have more prayer power? If we’ve been especially good lately, does this increase the effectiveness of our prayers?

Usually what I hear is that people who believe in the power of prayer have the most prayer power; and that when people’s prayers don’t come true, it’s because they don’t believe sufficiently in the power of prayer. A couple thoughts:

Has anyone ever checked this out? It seems like it would be easy enough to have two groups of people, one skeptical about prayer and the other believing in it, each pray for the same thing to find out whether the believers got better results. Of course nowadays everyone doing a study seems to be a special interest group of one kind of another, so it might be hard to trust the results...

On the other hand, some people may object to even trying to test whether petitionary prayer works. Isn’t there a biblical verse about not “testing” God? Or perhaps the word is “tempting…? Either way, it’s hard to see how this word could have referred to applying the scientific method to prayer, since the Bible was written so long before science came along.

Problems

Even if we refrain from trying to test whether petitionary prayer really works, and just accept that it does, I still see a few potential problems with a scenario in which God respectively rewards and punishes believers and disbelievers for their belief or disbelief in the power of prayer by granting prayers only or primarily to believers.

First: Assuming God wants us to believe in the power of prayer, then granting prayers to those who already believe in it while not granting prayers to those who harbor doubts concerning its efficacy, seems an odd way for God to promote belief in prayer. I say “odd” rather than “mysterious” because although I, like many of us, find God mysterious, I also find that people often use the word mysterious to refer to things that are simply illogical or contradicted by experience. To me, mystery is very deep, and has to do with the nature of being itself – something entirely different than riddles, word play, or logical contradictions that are transparently products of the human mind.

Second: Consider the verse, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.” Maybe this justifies why God doesn’t tend to grant prayers to those with little belief in prayer’s power? And yet everyone I’ve ever spoken to who’s convinced of the power of prayer believes in it precisely because they think they’ve seen it work…

Third: A scenario in which God respectively rewards and punishes believers/disbelievers in the power of prayer for their belief/disbelief would seem to presuppose that God feels that those who don’t believe in the power of petitionary prayer are doing something wrong or sinful by being as honest and conscientious as they can be about the matter. For some of us are incapable of “choosing” our beliefs. Whatever we may want to believe, we believe what appears to be true. The best that some of us could ever do in terms of affirming that we believe in the power of prayer would be to lie and tell others that we do, even though we would know that in fact we doubted. It is hard to – believe… that God would want us to lie, or would punish us for something that’s not a choice.

Gratitude, Legos, and the Divine Plan. Post #2

2005-09-28T10:42:00.000-04:00

Global Gratitude

Mau: “Everything we have is already a miracle.” Michael, similarly: “What we should be asking for is not more blessings, but to realize and be grateful for the blessings we have already received.”

La Coloratura: “When we {learn to} recognize {those things that we already} have more often than {those which we lack}, then we begin to experience real joy. And I think the more one takes time to be grateful, the more one will find that every day contains a myriad of opportunities to experience gratefulness. As an example, I can experience gratitude by marveling in the beauty and strength of my granite kitchen counter. Nothing more than that, and I am filled with a deeper sense of well-being and peace.”

I’ve also had a sense of joy and peace tinged with gratitude in relation to the simplest things: the sun on my back, the blue sky, how the air feels and smells. Being itself is a “given,” a surprise, nothing that we can personally account for or explain. So in this sense, it seems to me that life can have a feeling of being something like a “gift” regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof.

And I like Doshar’s, “Even the patience with which we face hardships is a blessing from God.” This again strikes me as pointing to something very basic: the strength and resilience by which so many of us are able to survive even terrible adversity. Here is something that we can find within ourselves which is again gift-like or given, something amazing and more than we can account for, whatever our beliefs or world view.

I find no conflict in feeling a global sense of joy, peace, and gratitude in relation to the elemental and basic things that inform and surround us, and that sustain all our lives. There is nothing here to me that seems contradictory or in need of explanation. For me, this includes SH’s gratitude in relation to all those who came before us. From basics like farming or the invention of written language, to the computer, the things we do and enjoy day to day were made possible by the prior creations, discoveries, and actions of others.

Being Particularly Grateful…

Now here’s where it gets tricky…

Some of us have much more to be grateful for than others in terms of the specific circumstances and events of our lives. The poor, the ill, victims of crime and war… Others of us watch it all on TV, troubled by whether we should take out a fifteen or thirty year mortgage. The contrasts in our varied… “fortunes?” – “blessings?” - are enormous.

Here are some explanations often given for the discrepancies. Some but not all are derived from your comments.

Explanations for Special Blessings

Good Things Happen to Good People; Bad Things… – This was the position of Job’s friends in the Book of Job. “He must be sinning in secret.” Even though Job outwardly appeared to be a good and faithful man, he must not be; otherwise God would bless rather than punish him. Here are three variations on this theme:

1. God had no special purpose in mind for, say, those other people who died in the crash that nearly killed me - or for anyone else whose life goes down in flames through no apparent fault of their own. Those other guys just aren’t quite as important in the divine plan as I am.

2. Sickness is necessarily a sign of spiritual or psychological unwellness.

3. Even if the person appears to be perfectly wonderful, they must have done terrible things in a past life if their present hardships are great. Justice prevails when we reap the consequences of things for which we have no memory. (Problems: Memory is the crux of identity. It’s what makes Alzheimer’s disease so dreaded. Most of us are clueless about having had any past lives. It’s hard for me to see any justice or even sense in receiving troubles or benefits for things that an “I” did of whom I have no recollection and yet was somehow purportedly “me.”)

God’s Mysterious Ways – Even when, say, an elementary school girl is raped and murdered, it’s part of the divine plan of an all-powerful, all-good Entity. Words like “senseless,” “meaningless,” “chaotic,” and even “random” or “chance,” actually have no meaning. Everything that happens is happening exactly according to God’s preconceived arrangement. Everything, and in every detail and particular, is always for the best. Whatever happens – that’s exactly what needs to happen and has to happen and how it needs to happen.

Caveats are usually tossed out at this point to show that human evil somehow isn’t God’s fault even when God is conceived of as all-powerful - and without any form of limitation or restriction on that power - as well as all-good.

Caveat One: Human evil isn’t God’s fault; it’s the fault of our sinful nature. Well then, our sinful nature and redemption… this is not part of God’s plan?? So... is there really a plan or not?

Caveat Two: God had to allow for evil in order to give us “free choice” otherwise we’d be zombies etc.

First, notice that any notion of “had to” is a limitation on God’s power. (Incidentally, that’s okay by me – and it’s also okay in “process theology.” The idea of God as all powerful doesn’t have to mean “able to do absolutely whatever he wants at every moment.”) Second, I don’t know for a fact that what makes us non-zombies after we’ve had coffee in the morning is the ability to choose. It might just be the coffee. Or maybe what makes us non-zombies is our sense of humor. If God had at least made a small minority of zombie-people, then we would have gotten to see what really makes a zombie a zombie; but this was left out of the plan. Third: an all powerful God who created the world ex-nilos surely could have allowed for choice and its assumed anti-zombie effects by making the world a place where we had free choice along a spectrum of options ranging from better to best. An all-powerful Master Planner could have omitted the evil Lego pieces, leaving us free to choose from among other colors.

Nothing Bad Happens - Every cloud is overflowing with silver linings. The “bad” things are really for the best because they make us stronger or provide us with valuable life lessons. Every murder, rape, torture and genocide that occurs is well worth it because the rest of us learn so much, even though this stuff has been going on since the dawn of civilization and we still haven’t learned, say, how to stop it.

What Do You Think?

You can probably tell that none of these explanations really works well for me. Is there some other explanation that I’ve missed? Or have I oversimplified – maybe one of the above explanations is really quite adequate if it were stated properly?

The Gratitude Attitude. Post #1

2005-09-26T08:23:00.000-04:00

Gratitude is often viewed as something basic to a religious or spiritual orientation toward life. The practice of praying before a meal in some families, Thanksgiving as a holiday in America… these are two common examples from my culture of giving thanks to God. (I must say, I’ve wondered how Native Americans feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday, but this would be a major digression…).

What are your thoughts about religious or spiritual gratitude – toward God, life, a “higher power” – however you conceive of it?

For example: Do you consider anything that occurs in your life and which brings you some benefit or fulfills some desire, a “blessing,” or something for which you “praise God?” If not, what distinctions do you make? Where do you draw the lines?

And in what terms do you understand those who are not similarly blessed, and those to whom terrible things happen?

Forgiveness: Final Remarks. Post #7

2005-09-22T15:07:00.000-04:00

Before moving on to the subject of gratitude, here’s a final post on forgiveness. It’s based on two comments that were made to the “forgiveness” section of the “Changes” link at the right. Looking at the two comments together, they make a distinction worth considering.

Clean Breaks vs. Entanglements

First, here’s an excerpt from Sirbarrett’s comment. His blog is called, Writings of Faith, http://sirbarrett.blogspot.com/.

“They told me they had forgiven me, but our relationship is ruined. Can forgiveness sometimes be incomplete? I have lost them. I wonder if the problem isn't so much the need for forgiveness, as remembering what it is that we need forgiveness for and changing that.”

Anonymous says, in part (btw, A has no blog, but way to go, A – good to have non-bloggers commenting to blogs too!): “…I live my life and let other people live theirs, and as long as they're not messing with me, I don't care what they do. If they mess with me, I'll let them know right up front and tell them to stop. If they don't stop, I walk and make sure they can't get near me again. It's protecting yourself. You have to protect yourself.”

Anonymous’ “live and let live” outlook, in the sense of completely breaking off contact with those who harm us, amounts to, “forget and move on" rather than “forgive.” I think this works well under two conditions:

1. If the harm done was not great and lasting, making it relatively easy to move on, since the anger isn't likely to linger over time to trouble us.

2. If we are willing and able to walk away from the person who wronged us.

Sirbarrett, however, points to another kind of situation, in which, after the wrongdoing occurs, we are either unwilling or unable to completely exclude the other person from our lives. This is often the case with family members. If a substantial wrong is committed, the relationship can be greatly altered for the worse – “ruined,” as Sirbarrett mentions.

Forgiveness and Salvaging Relationships

To me, Sirbarrett’s comment points to the fact that in this kind of situation, forgiveness may at best be part of the resolution, if resolution can occur at all. It is the deteriorated pattern of feeling, communication, and behavior that needs to change. Forgiveness could conceivably be an early step in making such changes; yet it may be that the act requiring forgiveness itself arose from out of an interpersonal pattern that was faulty in certain respects to begin with…

Forgiveness: Self-Forgiveness. Post #6

2005-09-02T11:05:00.000-04:00

Here and there throughout these posts on forgiveness, some of you have brought up the issue of self-forgiveness. I think I’m about to do my worst job ever with a topic. Hope I’ll be able to forgive myself afterwards…

I feel like my thoughts about this are superficial and maybe weird. How’s that for a start? You need to help me out on this one, or this post is going nowhere! But I’ll try, since a number of you brought it up.

Maybe I’ll just list out my own random thoughts and questions. I don’t know how else to begin.

Randomly Speaking…

Could it be that women usually feel more guilt than men, and so they have a stronger interest in self forgiveness? If that’s the case, it strikes me as ironic. I mean, what percent of the world’s violence, for example, is caused by women?

When it comes to specifically religious guilt, however, conservative Christian (Jewish? Islamic?) men as well as women seem to be equally affected. Certainly conservative Christian theology places heavy emphasis on the idea that all of us are “basically sinful,” so this may be why.

Personally, over the larger course of my life, guilt was a minor and almost non-existent theme. I honestly don’t feel “basically sinful.” (This could be my own “ignorance!”) But I’ve done little harm to others, I think some good, and although over the last twelve years there has been much discord in my life, the causes have been an undiagnosable progressive disease, and harm done to me by others. I did go through an angry stage, and still have some anger. But I know that anyone would have to grapple with these things under such circumstances. And although for a while some of the anger was directed at God, it isn’t anymore, hasn’t been for years, and I feel at peace with God. Part of this was seeing that I will remain on God’s side even if it seems that God is not on mine. A lot of good it does God, I guess, but that's how it is.

Personally Speaking…

There is one sense in which I do feel guilty, although everyone tells me it’s ridiculous. I even suppose that I recognize the irrationality myself. Still, I feel this quite deeply.

Despite my best efforts over a long period of time, I appear to be in the process of failing at what I thought, and what truly felt in every way to in fact be, my vocation. Despite having written a book that I’m well qualified to write, and which a wide variety of feedback indicates is a good book, and perhaps very good, it will almost certainly remain unpublished, or else published in such a limited way as to go essentially unread. The reasons are outside my control, having to do with how my work was first interrupted for a long period of time by health problems, and certain facts concerning the publishing industry that now make the quality of the work, especially in the area of nonfiction, of secondary and really relatively minor importance to publishers and agents. On top of this, I feel that I have failed my family. My disability makes me a heavy, long term burden.

So I feel pretty much like a total failure – like I failed God, failed my family, let everyone down. Guess I’m “letting it all hang out” here. But I don’t have a clear concept of self-forgiveness, so I’m just presenting these stray thoughts.

I do know that I’ve given my best, and so on one level, I am very much at peace. But on another level, I feel terrible. I don’t dwell on this feeling, and don’t want to give an exaggerated impression of how much of a problem it is for me. But in the background, it’s there.

Coherently Speaking…

Here’s a coherent thought: one aspect of self forgiveness might involve recognizing that we may judge ourselves far more harshly than we’d ever think of judging others. But I already noticed this, and it doesn’t change my feelings! So at least for me, it’s not the complete answer.

Hmm… just thinking as I write, maybe a dangerous practice… but I’m realizing that we may also expect and even demand things of ourselves that we would never demand from others. I expected to succeed. I demanded it of myself – despite the obvious fact that realizing or failing to realize a practical achievement depends not only on our own efforts, but also on events that impact us favorably or unfavorably.

I felt myself called. I knew that no matter what, I would follow, and have done so. But maybe somewhere along the line I turned my “no matter what” into, and no matter what, I will succeed. But this part really isn’t my call…

Forgiveness: What Is Sin? Post #5

2005-08-31T12:35:00.000-04:00

The last two posts received a number of comments with ideas on what’s involved with the process of coming to forgive someone. People may want to read each others' comments for this.

Although there are exceptions, and some of you have reservations, there was more agreement than I anticipated around the idea that wrongdoing may be more a matter of “not knowing what we do” than fully conscious choice.

Illustration: A way in which not knowing what we do may be understood is illustrated by this exchange between Crystal and I:

First, I suggested that it might be possible for a person to have rational clarity about the consequences of his or her actions, yet remain profoundly ignorant - of inner meanings, of spiritual consequences.

Crystal responded by amplifying further on the passage from scripture: "Yes, I think I see what you mean. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said 'they know not what they do' ... they knew they were executing someone, maybe even felt it was murder. But they probably discounted any spiritual consequences of that act. "

Explanation: This might fit nicely with Michael’s thought: "Going back to… this issue about sin, whether or not it is the 'conscious choice' or 'not knowing what we do…' {It could be} that sin isn't one or the other or even a mix of the two, but entirely both at the same time."

So at the level of rational understanding, offenders may be said to know the consequences of their actions, and in that sense they choose them. But on a deeper level, their awareness and their feeling for the consequentiality of their actions, both to themselves and others, may be quite limited - or even, and I think here of sociopaths, entirely absent. If, for example, one entirely or mostly lacks the knowledge and experience of compassion, and then murders someone pleading for his or her life, it seems to me that the sense in which the action is chosen is limited.

And to me, this point of view does make it easier to forgive.

Sin and Institutional Religion: The Church, as far as I’ve experienced it, traditionally takes the view that sin is tantamount to turning away from God with full and deliberate consciousness. In fact, I was personally warned not long ago by a conservative Christian, in a manner that he imagined was subtle, that I am going to hell unless I “choose” to parrot his line, “I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.” It was clear that he just wanted me to repeat the words - he wasn't interested at all in discussing their meaning. I’ve also known some Muslims to similarly hint that not “choosing” to acknowledge Mohammed as the Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as God’s final revelation will has dire consequences.

And yet, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do,” seems to me to offer us an alternative understanding of sin as deep ignorance, and one which is consistent at least with Christian scripture – I am less familiar with the Koran, so someone may be able to help us here.

As for me, I don’t believe in parroting lines for anyone. Even if I repeated a line to make someone happy, which I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t really agree unless I knew exactly what was meant by each word of the statement. And it isn't because I'm the "free-thinker" that my conservative Christian accuser thinks I am.

It's because truthfulness is basic to my approach to God. I obey that inclination. Call it part of my religion. As far as I know, I don’t choose this. It’s who I am. So if I’m wrong here, then I am deeply ignorant indeed.

Forgiveness: They Know Not What They Do. Post #4

2005-08-29T13:06:00.000-04:00

Kathy, posting to the Changes link, along with AsianSmiles in the comments section to the last post, brought up a couple of interesting points that happen to be closely related. I wondered if they might be useful in the struggle to become “free-gracers” – that is, people who are able to forgive any and all offenses, rather than judging individuals who have offended us on a case by case basis.

Kathy: Forgiveness" hmmm? Well, Jesus had the attitude that humans do not know what they do. We don't even know why we do the things we do...how can we understand why other people do the things they do (hurting people and themselves)?

AsianSmiles: When my dad died two years ago, I cried like a baby. There was no room for bad memories, his failures and his offenses. All I felt was the grief when I hugged his cold and lifeless body. There was no room for blame. All I felt was the loss of a father that will be buried in the ground and the loss of a chance to tell him that he did his best and “that’s all that matters to me.”

A Question: When people behave badly to us, do they choose to harm us with full appreciation and consciousness of what they are doing – its implications for themselves as well as us? Are people “basically sinful” in the sense that they choose wrongdoing with full and knowing consciousness?

Or might it be better to think of offenses given to us personally, and to conceive of sin generally, as a matter of people being flawed, ignorant, often deeply and seriously… And yet possibly this is the best they can do, at least at that point in their lives, and in relation to us.

So “sin,” rather than being construed as “conscious choice,” becomes, “not knowing what we do” – ignorance, or being unenlightened.

What do you think?

Forgiveness: Process & Strategy. Post #3

2005-08-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

Irina speaks of being in need of a “strategy” to forgive. Doshar speaks of how her lack of forgiveness of a certain person is like a “dark cloud” for her. She hopes to forgive one day even though it appears so impossible to her right now.

Tish G makes an interesting remark:

“I always think of forgiveness as process... as something that is ongoing the more we live our own lives and mature. Forgiveness is different at different times.

"It would be wonderful to be a Free-Gracer and have it actually work. More often than not, I hear people say they forgive someone--yet are doing so thru grit teeth. They are compelled to forgive by others, and follow the axiom of ‘act as if,’ hoping that if they follow the commands of others they will eventually ‘get it.’"

I agree with both her points. I’ve also known people who say they forgive, yet somehow give the impression they don't, at least not completely. At the same time, I think some people do really get there – at least with their own particular “cases.” As to "free-gracers," I’m not sure I’ve ever met anything more than aspiring ones.

A Success Story & Some Elements in the Process

Renee’s comment (Poems and Writings), for those who missed it, strikes me as an authentic account of someone who has been through the sort of process Tish mentions and came out of it really forgiving, and in cases where people committed what anyone would recognize as major transgressions against her. The process for Renee seemed to involve moving from a position where she’d come to see this as something she wanted to do, to finally really experiencing forgiveness at the level of her immediate feelings.

Elements in the process: Michael points to the passage of time. Certainly processing these things takes much time for most of us, so this is good to bear in mind. Eventually we may find that we can forgive people that we can’t now.

Lynne and Keshi point to acceptance and non judgment of the offender, and Emilyjane as having a genuine desire to forgive, as some specific elements that might be involved in this process. I'd add that maybe Tishs' "as if" - acting as if we forgive, although we don't yet - might be a stage along the way toward the real thing for some people.

A Time-Problem: Can Offenses and Forgiveness Occur Simultaneously?

Personally, I find time to be a big problem. The fact that everyday I live with added pain and accelerated physical deterioration that has been caused by others makes it hard for me to process things, hard to get them behind me. Also, there’s one person in my life, or who used to be, who could be very helpful in my circumstances but who isn’t. Whatever little contact we have shows that this individual remains unwilling or somehow unable to help when almost any person in his position would find it unthinkable not to help. So for me, I think I would pretty much have to become a “free-gracer” - not sure that I can ever resolve my own matters case by case.

A Real Free-Gracer?

The factors are so numerous; our specific situations so different. I wonder if there can be a single strategy.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist monk. Years ago I read his, The Miracle of Mindfulness, and was impressed with the simplicity and profundity of his writing. If there really are some “free-gracers” around, I think he may be one of them. I found the piece that follows on someone else’s blog - as indicated on the link below. I’ve italicized two lines that I think might possibly give a clue about “free gracing.”

Interrelationship

By Thich Nhat Hanh(1929 - )

You are me, and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you; you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.

Quoted from Dance of Love blog http://www.danceoflove.blogspot.com/

PS: The "Changes" link has further comments on forgiveness that people have recently added.

Forgiveness: “Case by Casers” and “Free Gracers.” Post #2

2005-08-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

I think I see an overall pattern to most of your comments. I’m just going to present the pattern here, without necessarily saying whose comments belong in what category. Most of you will “know who you are...”

The “Case by Casers”: Many of you seem to want to take a case by case approach to forgiving others. Whether you can forgive depends on certain variables. Major variables include how large the offense is; whether the offenses have ceased or are ongoing; and whether the transgressor repents. In some cases you can forgive; in others you can’t.

I’ll add that I think these variables affect everyone’s thinking in certain situations. For example, I can think of an occasion in my life where the individual apologized in such a sincere, meaningful way, and never again gave me the least offense, that my feelings were changed in an instant. I’m not even so sure you can call it forgiveness. The person had so clearly changed that to have clung to my anger would have been like trying to stay mad at a ghost.

The Free Gracers: Others of you seek a “unified field theory” – the Albert Einsteins of the forgiveness world! I’d like a UFT myself, but so far I’m no Einstein. In other words, free gracers want a way to forgive any and all transgressors.

Why? I think essentially because of something a number of you have pointed out or suggested: keeping those embers of blame or condemnation alive usually causes harm only to ourselves. It keeps us agitated, subtracting from our peace of mind. Unless we can forgive sins freely, then we ourselves are, so to speak, left at the mercy of those worst cases in which an individual has harmed us severely, has not changed his or her attitude, and apparently or in fact couldn’t care less about it. We remain in a state of turmoil. They get on with their lives.

Some of you have proposed some “free grace methods”: for example, not judging, and recognizing that we ourselves are flawed too, and have sometimes committed transgressions. But I know something in me wants to say: “But what that person did to me is much worse and less justified than anything I ever did to anyone else!” I keep going back to “case by case...”

So I guess I’d be interested if any of the free gracers have found a free grace method that not only sounds reasonable, but has really worked for you in situations of major transgression, and allowed you to feel – what? Love of the transgressor? Some simple lack of condemnation that’s emotionally neutral? What does it feel like?

Religion and Forgiveness: Two people brought the Bible into the discussion. As I find is often the case, you can find a basis in the Bible for more than one point of view.

Someone in the “Changes” section (btw, I changed the topic there to “forgiveness”) cited that verse about forgiving those who offend us “seventy times seven,” by which Jesus meant: forgive endlessly. Seems to make him a “free gracer.” On the other hand, someone else remarked that God requires us to repent before forgiving us for our sins. So God the Father is a case by caser but the Son is a free gracer? Gee, maybe God himself is having trouble with this one. If that's true, how on earth are we supposed to figure it out?? (You don't have to take me seriously on this last point, I'm mainly just trying to get myself off the hook...)

Forgiveness: Beginning with Anger. Post #1

2005-08-22T10:01:00.000-04:00

Back to business… another topic in religion and spirituality: forgiveness. I really have no idea where to begin. It isn’t something I gave much thought to over most of my life. The more I look at it, the bigger and more complicated it seems to become. I’ll start with the one thing that appears basic and obvious to me.

Anger: Whatever it is, forgiveness involves getting past anger. Not to forgive is to remain angry.

The anger we hang onto when we don’t forgive isn’t necessarily a red hot flame. It can be more like a pile of embers that we tend to now and then, and only in the back of our minds. Just a cold, faintly glowing anger that doesn’t die. In a word, bitterness. We may attend to it reflexively, not even noticing when we do so. We seem unable to help it. And of course, embers can turn into a raging fire under the right conditions.

The Limitations of your Moderator… I feel less equipped to guide discussion of this topic than any other that we’ve looked at or that’s likely to come up. I anticipate your comments will provide at least as much insight as anything I can offer. Briefly, here’s why.

Easy - Prior to losing my health, my life was easy. I didn’t have much of anything to forgive.

To elaborate a bit: I did have the same sorts of issues around forgiveness typical of many others who are fortunate enough to be leading comfortable lives in wealthy nations. A certain amount of “baggage” from my past. Certain relationships. Issues from time to time dealing with people at work. Under these conditions, I was eventually able to reach a point of thinking that I knew exactly what forgiveness was – or more precisely, why it isn’t even necessary.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Patience has been one of my strengths. On top of this, in my late twenties I did some reading in Buddhism. To me, the great thing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t just say, “Be good.” It provides ideas and practices for how to go about becoming a better person. I practiced. I changed. More and more, I was able to come out from under the control of my past in areas that had been holding me back. I also found that in dealing with others, slights or insults to my emotions almost entirely stopped bothering me. Any sting was transient.

So the idea I formed of forgiveness was simple: “Love does not take offense” – from Corinthians I 13, I think. If you’re not offended to begin with, then forgiveness never needs to take place. I imagined I had nothing further to learn about the subject.

Rough – In reality, I was clueless about what it means to suffer a real offense, let alone an endless series of them. Then, at age 37, I began a process of learning that to develop a health problem in America that is very rare and difficult to diagnose or treat, is to find out that you don’t matter. Not to the health care system. Not to any number of specific identifiable persons and entities within that system.

When the consequence of this is increasingly severe and irreparable forms of damage to your body accompanied by mounting pain and functional limitations that you must live with for the rest of your life, day and night – well, these are not small offenses. If the details of what I have gone through and still go through today with our health care system were things that I, as a healthy person, learned were happening to a perfect stranger, I would be outraged.

Certain ways of coping with these matters eventually arrived for me that leave me at peace at what I would describe as my deepest level. Yet frankly I am sure that I haven’t “forgiven” the persons involved. It isn’t a word that I can honestly use. To me, it has overtones of warmth and reconciliation that I simply don’t feel, and that at least in some respects, will never exist. (The harm-doers here are doing nicely without my forgiveness. We’ve “lost touch.”) So at levels that are not as deep, but deep enough, the embers glow - although I know they won’t erupt in flames. “Been there, done that.” I will never fan the embers that way again.

Impossible?

Still, I have not discovered how to put the past completely behind me when past offenses – including recent ones -- not only live on, but continue multiplying inside my frail body. From my former HMO and from a number of doctors playing God, I have received gifts that go on giving.

My own experiences will not be the focus of these posts. I refer to them for this reason: as a group, people sitting at computers and posting comments on blogs are probably not especially likely to be suffering from terrible social injustices. Yet every day millions around the world, primarily in poor nations, suffer gross bodily harm or death through the deliberate actions or inactions of others; or they must witness those whom they love experience such things, as my family has had to do with me. It is a terribly destructive thing.

So I don’t want our discussion of forgiveness to turn entirely on the average experiences of people leading relatively privileged lives in wealthy nations. Not that these experiences don’t count or represent real injury. It’s all real. But I don’t want us glossing over what a truly rough world it is out there, and the difficulty – impossibility? – of forgiveness in some situations.

My Interview with The New Yorker

2005-08-19T11:13:00.000-04:00

Yes - it’s happened for me. The big time, high fives, eyes wide. After being interviewed some months ago by Famous Blogger Magazine and Conservatives Weakly, my phone rang last weekend – a surprise from the New Yorker’s new Editor-In-Chief, Mr. Newt York. York didn’t ask about my views on religion and spirituality. He simply wanted to get to know the face behind the mask, the mug behind the blog, the glove behind the dash. The new New Yorker, York explained, is going for a slicker image, and his team sees me as the cutting edge, the face of change, the… well, whatever the third one was. Oh! Yeah! The phone exchange!

Our phone exchange went like this:

Newt York: Mr. Martin, just a quick call to see if you’d like to come to our studios for an interview.

PM: It’s – up – to – you…

NY: No, really sir. It’s your call.

PM: You called me. Wait a minute… studios? I thought magazines had
“offices.”

NY: This is the big-time, big top, big tent. Interested, punk?

PM: Hey!

NY: Sorry sir, I forgot myself.

PM: If I come, will you publish one of my poems?

NY: We’ll think about it.

PM: Okay.

On to the interview itself. I have printed the text in full:

NY: Paul M. Martin, how is it that you have the sheer guts to face the blogging world without a moniker?

PM: I just use my regular reading glasses at the computer.

NY: I’m talkin’ nickname, handle, slang.

PM: Dang. You mean why don’t I use “Walrus Nose,” or “Shake-a-Puddin'?”

NY: Exactly.

PM: Because when I get to Charlie Rose’s show, I don’t want him introducing me that way.

NY: Intriguing… And why is it that you consistently choose to - defy all labels?

PM: Well, it’s just that nowadays they make the print small, so I mostly pop my microwaveables right in and don't mess with them. It's not so much a political statement.

NY: Speaking of politics - is there any statement that you would like to make now, in our forum?

PM: I would like to see this administration and Congress focus more on blogging.

NEW “Changes” Feature

2005-08-01T12:17:00.000-04:00

Someone asked what I’m doing with this new feature, which you can click on at the right of this blog's home page.

I don’t know! I’ll see how it goes...

I just have the idea that I’d like a place where people can simply tell and read each others’ stories relating to spiritual development, with little or no comment from me.

The topics will change from time to time.

What I’ve noticed so far is how easy it is to relate to the comments. To read them is often to find myself saying to myself: I’ve experienced my own version of that…

As to anything else I might do with the comments to Changes, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll feature one occasionally as a post.

No cash prizes, however…

Pre-Post PLUS: George Bush's Theology

2005-07-28T21:34:00.000-04:00

So many good but diverging comments!

Tomorrow I'm taking the easy way out. Whatever I post will be off-topic.

I'll pick back up on "What Really Matters?" next week...

And just now, July 31, I'm adding some more "off-topic," as long as this pre post has been getting comments:

George Bush's Theology

"This month, Professor Bruce Lincoln of the University of Chicago Divinity School examines the theology discernable in the statements and policies of President George W. Bush.

[T]hese texts convey a sophisticated theology of history that rests on five propositions: 1) God desires freedom for all humanity; 2) This desire manifests itself in history; 3) America is called by history (and thus, implicitly by God) to take action on behalf of this cause; 4) Insofar as America responds with courage and determination, God’s purpose is served and freedom’s advance is inevitable; 5) With the triumph of freedom, God’s will is accomplished and history comes to an end.

This is the fullest and most sophisticated theological position Mr. Bush has articulated in the course of his presidency. It follows several earlier systems, each of which had its own force, rationale, and moment. These include an Evangelical theology of “born again” conversion; a theology of American exceptionalism as grounded in the virtue of compassion; a Calvinist theology of vocation; and a Manichaean dualism of good and evil in conflict."

Bruce Lincoln, University of Chicago - from the Martin Marty Center Web site

A good dispassionate summary. I do wonder whether the professor isn't involuntarily giving GB some extra credit here - I mean, the idea that GB thought it all out so systematically, personally strikes me as questionable.

By way of an analogy which I hope is not too unflattering to our closest genetic cousins, Jane Goodall wrote sophisticated descriptions of chimpanzee behavior that went far beyond any work product the chimpanzees could have created themselves.

But yes, it does seem to me that this theology, which I'm not personally prepared to call "sophisticated," can be inferred from GW's assorted remarks.

Obstacles: Summary. Also: What Really Matters? Post #1

2005-07-27T09:30:00.000-04:00

Summary To-Date

We’ve had widespread agreement that egoism or selfishness is an obstacle to living and acting from out of our love, or better natures. And for at least some of us, death can be an obstacle. This can take the form of the idea of death – for example, when we view it as our complete annihilation. It can also take the form of the reality of death – for example, witnessing someone we love die young, or in an especially painful and difficult manner. Either way, our perception of life as meaningful and good can be undermined. Faith can challenged.

What can counter these obstacles? Two basic things have come up in comments: experiential processes of growth and development; and religious beliefs. Some of you emphasize one over the other. The beliefs are quite clear-cut. The processes, I think, are harder to articulate.

What Matters?

We could take a closer look at any of these subjects, but here I want to pause and ask a simple question. This might be because I’m so profound; or it might be because I need to keep this post short because I have so much to do this week.

In religious or spiritual terms, what really matters and why does it matter? What makes a person truly religious, or spiritual, or close to God? If you are an atheist or agnostic, what is it about our human natures that you think matters most, and why? I’m thinking, we could consider:

Our beliefs
Our experiences
Our actions

Or anything else that comes to mind…

Obstacles: Mr. Death’s Fraternal Twin. Post #6

2005-07-25T09:33:00.000-04:00

Annihilation’s Downside

After reading your amazing variety of comments, I realized that the only way I could make sense out of them was to figure Mr. Death has a brother. But before I get to that, I want to address something in the comments that I let pass:

Benjamin clearly identifies the problem that death poses for some of us: it looks like our annihilation. Just to cheer everyone up, I would add: and the annihilation of everything and everyone that we care about. That’s exactly what bothered me when I was young, and that particular word – “annihilation” – is exactly the word I used to describe what bothered me about death. Some of you, like Benjamin, although you can understand being disturbed by dying, which can hurt a lot, are left scratching your heads about what could really be so dreadful about the idea of being gone.

I can’t write very compellingly or feelingly in the space of a post about how death as annihilation can pose a problem. I'll try just hinting at it.

You push a child on a swing a couple times. It’s never enough. The child wants more pushes. And higher ones.

Hinduism’s summation of our real wants as “infinite joy, knowledge, and being” always resonated with me. We experience life, love it, and want more and greater. At times we may even seem to experience intimations of this. And I like the word “infinite” here, because it’s clear that what we desire isn’t something for shoring up our own egos, but something universal. (That's also what those intimations feel like.)

Death as annihilation would be the opposite of this. Even though you could never experience it, you can contemplate that this might be how it is. You can even conclude that this is almost certainly how it is, like I did in my teens and twenties, by following certain lines of evidence and repeating them to yourself over and over.

Suns burn out. The universe expands forever until they all wink out, or until the whole thing recollapses on itself according to the unknown variable of how much dark matter the universe contains. (It’s been a while and I’m too lazy to google, but I think that’s roughly the science, or at least as it stood when I was thinking about this stuff.) Either way, our species, the earth itself, everything we cherish most, just gets snuffed out. We’re born to lose it all.

You can look at that and say: life is meaningless, hopeless. This isn’t the kind of world I even like to think about inhabiting. It negates the best we have to give, the best we can be, and all that we can aspire to. This isn’t good enough. I want out.

Fraternal Death Twins: The Intellectual One, and the “Go-Getter”

Many of you provided personal illustrations of experiencing death. There were brief references to the instinctual adrenaline-rush of alarm that comes with dodging the proverbial bullet, or, say, a close call behind the wheel. Mostly, there were your experiences of the passing of loved ones, including the angry reaction to seeing family members afflicted by leukemia, grief at a father’s passing, and the sad yet peaceful witness of a grandfather passing in relative comfort after a full life.

I think anybody could identify with these stories. They are all about facing Death the Go-Getter, death the real thing. Meeting up with this guy, our reactions are pretty similar. Even those with firm beliefs about an afterlife are more grief stricken than jubilant upon a loved one’s death.

But where it comes to his twin, Intellectual Death, it’s another story. Here, faced with no loved one who apparently just turned into a corpse, it is our beliefs about what death represents that principally determine our reactions to it. And since our beliefs vary widely, so do our reactions.

Getting back to Go-Getter Death, I have the feeling that when he comes for us - when we ourselves teeter on the verge of corpsehood, as it were – then our actual experiences may again have more similarity and overlap than when we are just sitting around thinking about death. Of course it’s pretty hard to have this conversation with people on the verge, so it's not like I really know…

Hmm. “Corpsehood.” Not a word you hear much. I guess whereas our childhoods and adulthoods vary considerably, corpsehood stories would be boringly similar.

“I was interred at Forest Lawn. For a change, I lost everything except my hair…” And who needs to hear that. Except maybe dentists, because we might add, “Oh yes, and my fillings have survived nicely.”

Obstacles: What Kind of Guy Are You, Mr. Death? Post #4

2005-07-20T12:27:00.000-04:00

“I'm sorry for going off-topic... Nobody's said much about change. If we haven't really lived are we looking to change?” (Benjamin, comment to July 18th post.)

“Yup.” (Me, replying now.) Changing is what A First-Hand Faith is about, and topics from that manuscript have been serving as a kind of general guide for the topics on this blog. Change, or even transformation, is the overarching theme of the ms and therefore of the blog.

Death’s Darker Side

Overall comments to the July 18th post don’t go much further into the relationship between fear and egotism, which everybody seems to at least suspect is there. Instead, you’ve all been more focused on looking at A) what’s behind the fear of death, and B) what makes us unafraid or less afraid of death.

As far as what’s behind the fear goes, I’m going make use of Irina’s list, since it includes things that others mention as well – I’ve put those in italics – while offering additions. Irina is succinct, listing single words only, so I’ve referred to a similar list that was compiled by the more loquacious Julie Andrews having a bad day on The Sound of Music set:

“These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”

Uncertainty: Death is a great unknown. Not something we’ve had practice with.

Pain: Irina doesn’t actually mention this one, but others do. People fear the pain involved in dying as well as the prospect of being dead.

Punishment: Those who believe in heaven and hell can naturally have some concerns about which way they might be headed…

Loss: This includes parting from loved ones, parting from everything known and familiar; parting from the earth itself.

Definitiveness: Death appears to be the end. Period. The transformation of personhood to nothingness. At the least, the end of life as we know it.

Death as Maybe Not Such a Bad Guy After All

Generalizing broadly, your ways of dealing with death seem to fall into three categories. Some of them are not mutually exclusive, and some of you look to me as though you embrace more than one.

Belief: Strong belief in heaven and God speaks directly to the fear of death. The stronger the conviction, the less the fear. So for some of us, this is a powerful and clear-cut solution. However, it's good to bear in mind Emilyjane’s, “Just because someone is at peace with the prospect of what they think happens after death doesn't mean they are right about what does.” Even the strongest conviction is still conviction, belief – and not, in other words, knowledge. Strong conviction still contains some element of doubt. Even when we think that the Bible or the Koran is God’s final revelation, this is something that we have been told and believe. We didn’t receive the revelation and write the scripture ourselves.

Experience: Many of you talk little or not at all about belief, and more about what sounds like an experiential process that occurred for you over time to make death less anxiety-provoking, and even something that can play a positive role for you. Honoring and incorporating our memories of deceased persons that we have loved into our own lives, and using death as a reminder to really live while we have the chance, are a couple specifics that have been mentioned. Emilyjane brought up meditation as having been helpful to her own process.

“No Fear Here”: (Goddess) Goddess qualifies her statement by saying she imagines that if she had children, parting from them would make death a very difficult thing. Mary Beth is clear that it’s dying – the blood, the gore, the sweat, the dehydration (not her exact words) - that bothers her. Death only enhances her appreciation of life. (I do wonder whether she would say that she’s always felt this way, or if it’s been the kind of process for her that others refer to?)

Grief, More Details, and the Love of Others

One mistake I made at the outset that I want to rectify: I should have referred to “disturbance” over death so as to include grief as well as fear. Don’t think it would have changed the general conversation much, but thought I should mention this.

The manner in which belief helps counter disturbance over death is plain to see. But I’d be interested if anyone has anything more to say about whatever experiential processes have helped them. I think we’ve only touched the edges here. For example, to say that the idea of death enhances appreciation for life is a little like saying, “So enjoy that walk down the gangplank!” I’ve noticed the enhanced appreciation effect too, and don’t discount it. But is it central?

One more thing I’d like to point out. We’ve been talking about disturbance over our own deaths. But death is also about the last thing that we want for anyone we love…

Tuesday, Off-Topic Totally

2005-07-19T17:36:00.000-04:00

Mark Twain on Congress

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.- What Is Man?

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.- Mark Twain, a Biography

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.- Mark Twain's Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption

The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.- Mark Twain's Speeches, "The Weather"

...I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.- "Foster's Case", New York Tribune, 3/10/1873

http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html

Weekend Off-Topic, Totally

2005-07-16T15:47:00.000-04:00

These came in my email via my sister from who knows where, so everyone else may have seen this too. Anyway, I picked out the ones I liked best.

"Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house."--Rod Stewart

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."--Dave Barry

"If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."--Johnny Carson

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."--Mark Twain

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"--Dave Barry

Obstacles: Opening Thoughts. Post #1

2005-07-13T11:41:00.000-04:00

Religion, and to a large extent philosophy, show a strong interest in distinguishing our better natures from our lesser natures: agape vs. sin; compassion vs. ignorance; truth vs. illusion. Actually, I’d imagine that our species must have had a keen interest in looking at this distinction long before the arrival of religion or philosophy, just so we wouldn’t exterminate ourselves ahead of time by continually banging large rocks over each others’ heads.

That Woman Here starts us off by referring to “pride” as the greatest obstacle to experiencing and acting on love. We could take pride as either a synonym for egoism, or for one of its many variations: vanity, contempt, conceit, and so forth. I’m thinking that “ego” might be the better general term, since ego sometimes takes forms that are disheartened rather than “prideful” or “puffed up” – jealousy, for example.

Irina: “Pride, fear and egoism ... These are obstacles which keep you from really loving.” Irina goes on to say that love, on the one hand, and fear/egoism on the other, are incompatible, so that you need to distinguish between them in the quality of your feelings toward others.

”I am proud, and egotistic and afraid. But when it comes to true friends or to my mother for example, all that goes away.”

Me too. It’s easiest for me to realize what love is in relation to family and friends, both in terms of experiencing the feeling, and in terms of being able to go off and look at that feeling to get an idea of what it is.

Question 1, Broader Front: What about trying to move beyond our fear and egoism on a broader front than just in relation to friends and family members - so that our better natures come into play more often, for example, with coworkers? Do we want privatization of our better nature plans - known as “compassionate conservatism” in political circles - or are we seeking universal coverage?

That Woman Here: “I think Irina pretty much summed things up. Pride and fear keep any thoughts of romantic love at a healthy (or is it unhealthy) distance for me.”

TWH has come in right after we’ve finished up with romance, so anyone wanting to look at that specific topic might want to look back at a couple of the later “What Love Is” posts where it’s discussed. Here I’ll just say that to me, there can be positive or negative reasons for staying away from romantic involvements, depending on what’s going on in our lives.

Question 2, Fear-Ego Connection: Irina and That Woman have both mentioned a connection between fear and ego. What’s the connection? (Additionally, there was this from Life of Bryan: “I also feel like there is a lot of fear in self-centeredness…”)

Grumblefish looks more closely at fear, speaking of it in terms of, “the fear of facing ourselves honestly," and the difficulty of doing this from out of fear of what we might see; and from fear of how disconcerting this could be.

I think this sort of fear poses a great obstacle for many of us. Because you can’t get past what you don’t look at…

Emily Jane: “For some people--I think I used to be one of them--not being self-centered enough was a problem. The Bible says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ It doesn't say, ‘Love your neighbor more than yourself’."

Question 3, love of self/others: “Altruism” is a word I’ve never cared for, because for me, it connotes exactly the fallacy EJ points to: that loving others must come at our own expense. Any thoughts on this?

Benjamin, returning to the subject of fear: “Fear is my darkest cloud… And in searching for love, for I have been, it brings me up close to fear, which is my obstacle.”

Hmm… Benjamin is reminding me that although we’re focusing on obstacles to the expression and enactment of our love, we could also discuss obstacles to receiving love from others. But then B. turns back to thoughts on obstacles to acting from out of love:

”I think society, particularly the media, kind of suggests that we should restrict our love to a limited and safe number of people (family, romantic partner). I don't think this was the message of Jesus. I don't think it’s very helpful."

Life of Bryan picks up on this:

“To me, ‘losing’ yourself always seemed like taking yourself out of the number 1 spot in life's hierarchy. the need to focus on God/others first.

“I might be afraid that putting someone else first won't be fulfilling to my own needs… {but it always seems to prove otherwise,} like when you make a sacrifice for someone else, or go on a mission trip to somewhere that totally rocks your perspective on the world/life, or do Habitat for Humanity or whatever. But we're too caught up in our own… self-importance to hear God whispering in our ear.”

So Life of Bryan is talking about experiencing personal fulfillment from acting on love in relation to others. I’m thinking that he and Emilyjane might have two different departments of life in mind. Maybe EJ is thinking about interpersonal relationships that aren’t mutual enough – too one-way in terms of the giving/receiving. LB seems to be talking more about expressing love by way of the work we do, and how fulfilling this can be.

Question 4, Areas of Life: We’ve referred to love in interpersonal relationships, and love expressed by work that we do. Any special challenges/opportunities afforded by each?

We seem to have started out on the same general wavelength with this topic. These are some questions that your comments have brought to my mind.

What Love Is: Did You Say Love or Walnut? Post #14

2005-07-08T11:38:00.000-04:00

Gale in the Groves

It’s that time of year, and tropical storm Irina has mercilessly pounded this blog for the past two days, blowing nearly all the limes out of my trees, along with some of the smaller limbs, and threatening a couple lines of communication.

But with the winds subsiding, it’s time to clean up a bit:

First, it’s okay to laugh. In fact, you might say that the part of us that doesn’t take anything too seriously is quietly shaking God’s hand behind our backs or maybe exchanging high-fives. God isn’t a big worrier and isn’t so easily embarrassed.

Second, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has been making fun of anyone on this blog. If somebody did that, I would exercise my full powers as blog dictator to delete their comment.

Friendly teasing, however, is generally allowed. Still, if you don’t ever want to be teased, you could try typing, “Please don’t tease,” with your comments. But this is something you could easily get teased about, making this a real Catch-22…

Golf Ball in the Highball

Many of yesterday’s comments that were unrelated to fruit essentially said, “I think love can have lots of different meanings. Love means different things to different people.”

I’m not so sure. If this were true, love wouldn’t be a very useful word when it came to the realm of inner life and feeling. Jesus, for example, didn’t say, “Love one another, or… whatever.”

Let’s make an analogy with a word that refers to some object in the external world. Maybe it could be a short, one-syllable word similar to love. “Lime” might do nicely.

If “lime” could mean practically any old thing, some terrible situations could develop, as we have already seen. Another possibility:

You would tell the bartender that you wanted a lime with your drink, but might end up with a walnut or golf ball. Or you could turn back around from chatting with your friend only to discover that the bartender had carefully balanced a small tree limb atop your glass.

“What’s that doing there?” you’d ask. The bartender would give you a blank stare, then answer in kind of a gruff voice:

“You said you wanted lime…”

You wouldn’t dare say anything, and would have to sit there at the bar, awkwardly trying to hold the end of the tree limb in your drink, and pretending to enjoy it whenever the bartender looked over.

Mixed Drinks

So if love can have all kinds of different meanings, we might get mixed up a lot. We might say “love” when we really mean “romance,” for example. Our whole conversation about love and romance illustrates one of the reasons love can seem to refer to a lot of different things…

We finally decided that the state of being “in love,” or the “two in one combo,” actually refers to a blend of two elements: love plus the psychobiological attraction that exists between the sexes.

Almost always, we experience love in combination with other feelings. This is one major reason why love can feel quite different from one occasion to the next. It gets mixed up with the other feelings that we have toward an individual.

A second, closely related reason why our experiences of love can feel so different from one time to another is that our love is directed toward different kinds of things. Even if we confine ourselves to the realm of other people, without addressing, say, the love of nature, it feels quite different to love an infant than an adult, a friend from a family member, a brother from a sister, and so on.

But does this make love a different thing each time? I don’t think so. It just has different overtones from other feelings and perceptions that it’s associated with in relation to different people.

One small indicator that maybe we are all trying to talk about the same thing when using the word love is how important the word seems to be to people.

What Love Is: In the Flesh. Post #13

2005-07-06T11:58:00.000-04:00

Religious Cleavage: Emilyjane’s Provocative Thoughts

Emilyjane’s brought up something we haven’t thought about at all:

Deepak Chopra mentions the Old Testament poet in the Song of Solomon "who rhapsodizes about his love for God... as romantically as if he were swooning over a woman." He concludes, "The parallel between a lover's intoxication and a saint's is impossible to miss.”

I’d add that certain Christian mystics – as I recall, St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross, for example – also describe experiences of oneness with God in romantic and even somewhat sexual terms.

Emilyjane concludes: “I think, Paul, that what you are defining as love probably falls into the categories of intimacy and relationship as Deepak has defined them.”

Some thoughts:

What I would want to call love is the basis for all human relationships at their best. So if we become aware of what love is, we find something common to love as we experience it in every kind of relationship.

Intimacy as sexual love – the “two in one combo” or state of being “in love,” as we’ve called it elsewhere – is one particular kind of loving relationship.

While intimacy has been used as an analogy for experiencing the love of God, other sorts of human relationship also provide analogies, as in the traditional image of God the Father.

Some forms of religious experience actually do “feel” a bit like sex. St. Theresa of Avila wrote about it. I’ve experienced some of this myself. It seems to be one form that religious or spiritual experience, which is a big topic in its own right, can take. So if you’re talking about love of God from out of that type of experience, you can be drawn to use some romantic language. But again, this is going to be analogy and metaphor. Such language only says, “It’s kind of like this, in a limited way.” Metaphor and analogy is partial and imperfect depiction. It shouldn’t be confused with the thing itself.

For example, I could tell you that my head is like a mountaintop upon which the sun has beaten too powerfully and long. Much of the greenery that was once there is gone. (Tear and sniffle.)

But if you were to show up at my house, say after a three hour drive, and approach the top of my head with a picnic basket and binoculars, you’d be disappointed.

Love in the Flesh

We’ve made a few distinctions, and find ourselves in the general ballpark of what love is. At this point, for blogging purposes, it may be more efficient to point to examples of what love is rather than try to arrive at greater conceptual clarity.

Some examples from our own time: Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. And of course the earlier and especially prominent examples of Jesus, Buddha, and, undoubtedly, other important figures from other religions that I happen to know much less about. (For example, I know little about Mohammed – I think in part because Islam emphasizes the Koran itself more than its author?)

Whatever religious tradition you do or don’t believe in, these are all people who loved not only romantic partners or their families, but who lived from out of their love across the broader spectrum of their words and actions. They exemplify love as “the real thing,” the greater love, the love of God.

Or just call it the greater love if you’re not so sure about the word “God.” We went a little way into the issue of different perspectives on what the word God means in earlier posts. And there are perfectly good people out there who would reject the word God - possibly because we haven’t conceptualized it adequately. But then that’s my shtick. (No, I don’t consider myself to have fully conceptualized God. But I think I could talk about God in a way that would make the word meaningful to an atheist as well as a theist or pantheist. But that’s getting ahead of myself…)

The greater love, the real thing, is implicit to all of us. It’s worth trying to feelingly realize and understand what it is that we experience in relation to any particular person that we consider ourselves to love – brother or sister, father or mother, friend, son, daughter, partner, grandparent – because doing so can be a “portal,” so to speak, into the real thing. More accurately, it is the real thing, and it becomes a portal into basing our lives on that real thing more decisively and broadly. There are other portals, but love of others is so widely experienced and yet so poorly understood, that thinking about what we mean by the love of others isn’t a bad place to start.

Alive to Something Greater

“He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Mat 10:39.

We might even want to lose and find ourselves for our own sakes and for the sake of those we come into contact with every day.

Dying to ourselves involves both joy and pain. I think it’s what we’re here to do.

If we want to lead a real life, there is no getting around the cross that each of us personally faces. Making less of Christianity – or, more simply, making less of what it is to be a living, breathing human being in this world – is like spending our whole lives in front of the TV, at least on Sunday mornings, and watching this great video about this wonderful God/man named Jesus Christ who had to go through a heck of a lot just so we could sit on the sofa eating popcorn until the second coming.

I don’t think that’s what he was looking for.

PS: On a less lofty note, any comments on the goofy photo of myself and the existential questions it poses for me – this appears around the end of the comments section of the previous post – would be appreciated.

What Love Is: Romance? God? What? Post #12

2005-07-04T11:26:00.000-04:00

“Love, love, love” (The Beatles, intro to “All You Need Is Love”)

Post #11 was really my attempt to sing, along with the Doobie Brothers, “Bye Bye Love” - at least for a while. Of course I was imagining that love would come up again in the future, given the general subject matter.

But after post 11, I just kept hearing, “love, love, love.” The following two comments are representative for showing what I’d want to call the conflicting, or at least far from convergent tendencies to talk about love as romance vs. love as – well, what I’d want to call, “love.”

“In love” equals romance. “Love” is something else. {Lorena, summarizing my position.}

So when "in love" fades and now you just love the person, eventually if romance doesn't reappear i think it could be time to move on, no?

Lorena, commenting to June 29 post

***

What I think is that Love, just any kind of love, gets to be TRUE when we let God be in it. Any Love without God is imperceptibly destructive, egoistic, foolish. Not once has it been said that GOD IS LOVE...

Irina, commenting to July 1 post

Since Lorena posted first, and quotes me in what I think is an implicitly critical manner that makes me concerned I could get pushed around again in another skit (June 29 post), I’ll make romantic love the subject of today's post, and hopefully “call it a wrap” as far as romance goes. Then we can look to the direction Irina suggests.

If this doesn’t work, maybe I can feature Lorena and Irina in a boxing skit and let them duke it out. Emilyjane could referee. EJ has commented on both romance and love with approximately equal interest, so I think she’d be fair-minded…

French-Fries Fixation

Here I am, as far as romance goes, in my teens through early twenties. All right, into my early thirties, but to much less of an extent. I simplify matters only slightly, and don't believe that I was unusual in my attitude, although I guess I'm apt to find out if I was...

Pretty woman, nice personality: I’m “in love.”

Pretty woman, very nice personality: I’m “head over heels in love.”

Pretty woman, lousy personality: Depending on how pretty, I’m somewhere on the scale of infatuated to obsessed.

How did I make decisions on nice personality? It might have been the way she intoned the word “fries,” as in, “Do you want fries with your burger?”

So maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t see a lot of love in “romance.” I think “romantically involved” is more accurate than “in love,” especially in the early stages. And that’s where most of the romance is.

If I walk into a roomful of people and “agape” is the major thing going on in romance, then how is it that I’m much more likely to notice and focus on an attractive woman, than, say, a man, a baby, a kid, or an elderly lady? The thing that chiefly characterizes romance – that whole starry-eyed, psychobiological attraction thing – is not love.

The Deluxe Two In One Combo

But in the case of a happy long-term relationship, you have two people really getting to know and love each other. If that happens, which I think probably mainly depends on each partner being on a good path with their own psychological and spiritual development, my guess is that you’d never entirely lose the romance. As I mentioned in a previous comment or post, when we know someone a long time, we see them through that prism or lens.

A childhood friend is one example. If you still know each other as adults, the reality of your shared childhood can’t be forgotten. And I gave my Uncle Paul, now in his eighties, as an example in the romantic area. Married for over fifty years, he still can’t talk about his wife, who passed away several years ago, without the look of a man truly “in love.” He got the “two in one combo” for life. He loved his wife, and the romance they started out with never died. I doubt that it was smoldering in their seventies the way it did when they were twenty. She died of cancer, and it took quite a while. But the romantic history was part of their shared past that could never just disappear or evaporate from each others’ eyes when they looked at each other in the present.

So Lorena, I don’t think that what ends real relationships is the fading of romance. But I think what can kill romance is the end of an authentic, loving relationship. I’ve seen it happen.

Of course we haven’t defined what love is, but as you can see, in my opinion, it sure ain’t romance. Romance can be a prelude to a genuinely loving relationship or to a night at the Holiday Inn.

As if to prove my point, below there's a link to a poem I happened to stumble across online the other day.

Okay Lorena, take the straw out of your mouth and stop pointing it at me. I can see you’ve got soda up there.

poem

What Love Is: Sources, Anyone? Post #11

2005-07-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

While we haven't been definitive about what love is, to me this discussion has made some interesting observations and distinctions. Comments have pointed toward what I think is likely to be the next topic: religious/spiritual experience. (But I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.)

As long as we haven’t arrived at a clear conception of love, which is probably more than you can ask of blogging anyway, I’d like to close by referring to a couple sources on love that highlight important aspects.

St. Paul

First is a well known quote from the New Testament:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Cors. 13: 4 – 7

Here St. Paul offers a series of statements that I think are highly reflective of what love is – and isn’t. By framing so much of this in terms of what love is not, Paul also hints at the nature of the major obstacle to living from out of our love.

Paul doesn’t offer a complete concept or perspective on love here, and there’s at least one element in what he says that I find myself wanting to question. But for a loose series of statements about love, I don’t think it gets much better.

Dickens

The second source I’ll refer to is the best book on spiritual transformation by way of love that I’ve ever read: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. I’ve never read anything more evocative of how powerfully and decisively awareness of our love can change our lives. Adaptations of it are such a staple of childhood holiday entertainment that this book is easy to overlook.

Has anyone else read anything on love they found especially compelling?

What Love Is: Love Notes. Post #10

2005-06-29T12:07:00.000-04:00

Gel Cap Love

Several posts ago, when I started trying to work toward a concept of what love is, Matthew commented that you can’t “encapsulate” love. However, I still think it’s possible to get a concept that’s reasonably accurate. That way, when you ingest it, it breaks down in your system and helps transform you - so it’s not encapsulated anymore.

But we seem to be working with a gel cap and not one of those solid caplets, because there’s this tendency for people to keep unscrewing it and spill stuff all over the counter, pretty much ignoring my efforts at tidiness, like when I summarized with, “Okay. So far, we’ve got a feeling strongly connected with how we act, that always remains somewhat beyond words, and to which there are inner obstacles for living it out.”

So today I look at the counter and find powder everywhere. But I’ll just “rise with the tide and go with the flow” (Mockingbird, Carly Simon). What follows is a sort of Dear Ann Landers approach to some of the recent comments, which I may abridge or make up. But I’ll only make it up if I think it’s something you might say.

A word of caution: I don’t know if we want to head off mainly in a direction of love as it’s involved in relationships. There’s so much in addition to love that goes on with relationships that we’ll end up not talking about love that much.

Plus you need to bear in mind that you’d be asking somebody whose longest term relationship was with a dog named Lady. Also, that even though I worked for twenty-three years as a counselor, it was with elementary school children. So if you’re going to go there, you should concentrate on stuff I can handle, like, “How old do you think a girl has to be before she starts dating? My Dad says thirty-six.”

Divine Love-Talk: Stella started down this path in an attempt to contribute to conceptualizing what love is – a woman who appreciates a good capsule. Anonymous turned Space Food Sticks (we all feel bad about that, BTW), followed up on Stella’s lead by talking about the non-judgmental love of all-being or reality.

These remarks point down a path that includes love, but is broader. We’d need to ask: what is religious or spiritual experience? So for the moment, let’s call this powder for another capsule, set it just a little off to the side, and focus a bit more on what it means to love another human being. And hopefully, as per last post, taking the romance out of it as much as possible. But then there’s the Lorena problem.

Relentless Lorena:

Emilyjane, in a waitress uniform, leans across the counter with, “The usual?”

Lorena: “Well, I would like some more love with romance please...”

Emilyjane, turning away and hollering: “That’ll be the two and one combo!”

Paul, from the kitchen: “No fresh romance coming in for several months! It’s a seasonal thing!”

Emilyjane, to Lorena: “You can’t always have the two in one combo, honey.”

Lorena, frowning: “We’ll just see about that…”

Emilyjane: “Hey! Hey! You can’t just go…" {EJ’s voice trails off. My kitchen door opens and I look up to see Lorena close it and lock the door behind her.}

Lorena: “Well… {folds her arms and stares pointedly}.

"I just think it's very interesting that you’re trying to make romantic love available on this blog only on a seasonal basis. You’re saying romance can get old? You’re saying you can get too ‘mature’ for romantic love? Well I don’t think so, Mister…”

Paul, backed against a wall of the kitchen: “No, no Lorena {cough, cough}… And the way you’ve got me by the throat is hurting a little.”

Lorena, slightly relaxing her grip: “You’ve got five seconds and it better be good.”

Paul: “It's just that I think that as you get older, you romanticize romantic love less. You view that whole, spellbinding-fascination-physical attraction thing, as being less about love than - as ‘The Voice’ put it - an aspect of human biology. Something that draws the sexes together.

Lorena, raising her fist: “I’ll show you something that draws the sexes together…”

Paul: “Wait, wait! But you can still feel romance, and order the two in one combo, when you get older.”

Lorena, staring into space, rapping her fingernails on the counter: “So you’re saying you can have an unromantic view of romantic love, but still experience romantic love…"

Paul keeps quiet, swallowing hard.

“Not likin’ it… {pauses}

“You wormed your way out of it this time, Martin. But I’ll be back.” Exits.

T Spreads Powder Everywhere:

T says, “But what about loving writing?”

I’d say that really, you like writing. Same goes for ideas and objects. “Loving” here is a way of saying, “really really like a lot.” This would be clearer if we had a better handle on what love is.

T: “I love my best friend; in fact I am in love with him.”

Sounds like that two in one combo. “In love” equals romance. “Love” is something else. And you feel both toward the same person.

T: “I eventually came to realize that really I had been in love with the idea of being loved by my ex.”

I would want to put it differently: that you needed to feel loved, and this was the original basis for your relationship with your ex.

Receiving love is critical, especially when we’re kids. Not feeling loved by one or both parents creates a void that people often end up trying to fill with romantic relationships. But our partners can’t be the mothers or fathers we would have liked to have. The void has to be filled in other ways. And it can be.

What Love Is: Romance and Love Contrasted Post #9

2005-06-27T10:53:00.000-04:00

Romantic Disentanglements

To me, Emilyjane’s recent comment to the 6/24 post is a good disentanglement of romantic love from love:

“Of course, one can have love without sex, sex without love or the highly sought after two-in- one combo. One can love without being in love, fall in love without it leading to love and fall out of love and still love. As to sexual love versus spiritual love, it could be either/or, but I don't think it has to be.”

The Voice added this comment to the same post:

“To me, a cold reality about romantic love has to do with good old-fashioned Biology: Humans are hardwired to seek out people who are physically 'symmetrical' and, good 'breeding stock'…”

To which I replied:

“And I agree - romance is largely biology. And I'd construe ‘biology’ broadly. The hardwiring has to do not only with physical mating, even though that's Mother Nature’s intent, so to speak, but with what I've referred to as the ‘fascination’ that the opposite sex can have. In other words, it's hardwiring that includes the psyche.”

I’m getting a feeling that commentators' perspectives on romance are dividing along age-lines. The middle-agers appear to be inclined toward a less romantic idea of romantic love than the twenty-somethings. In fact, to put it bluntly, I think we middle-agers are saying that romantic “love” has little to nothing to do with love, necessarily, even though it’s possible (and great) to both love someone and be romantically involved with them. “Romance” and “love” are loosely connected, at best.

I think this may be one of those “passages” or “life stages” things. Speaking personally, I had a romantic idea of romantic love myself when I was younger.

The Real Thing: Summing Up What We’ve Got

So getting back to a concept of love, romance aside, what have we got? A quick summary of comments shows:

A feeling (Lorena, t).

A feeling with a strong inclination to express itself in action (Marybeth, Grumblefish).

A feeling that is ineffable in some sense. Words aren’t going to “encapsulate” it (Matthew’s word.)

A feeling that can be hard to act on because a lot of things can get in the way (Grumblefish, if I’m recalling correctly.)

There’s a lot more that could be said toward becoming conscious of what love is. It’s a feeling – but what’s that feeling like? It’s ineffable – but how so? (Guess I’m a wordy kind of guy…) And what kinds of actions does love lead to? But all of this is probably more than we can really explore on a blog.

The Real Thing: An Illustration

Anyway, yesterday I posted a comment to Nancy Nordenson’s brand new blog, Sabbath Journal (link at bottom of the page.) I like her concept for this blog. It’s based on Bible readings, but Nancy’s Bible must be in pretty good shape: she doesn’t seem to pound it. Her blog is low key, thoughtful, and she has a clear writing style.

Anyway, after posting the comment to her blog, I realized that it illustrates at least three out of four of the points in the concept of love as we’ve developed it here. So maybe it can serve to bring some closure to this topic. Maybe not. I’ll try to gauge from your comments whether to go further with love, or move on to something else.

The short form of Nancy’s question was to ask readers to think of an act of kindness toward them, and how it may have manifested God’s love toward them. My slightly edited reply was:

What follows happened during my last full year of work, before becoming too severely disabled to continue.

I was standing in our school gym, speaking to around 600 assembled students, staff, and parents - performing one of my parts in the end of the year awards assembly. Holding the mike in one hand and some notes in the other, I felt a sheet of paper slip from my grasp.

All I could do was pretend not to notice and hope it was a sheet of names or notes I'd already used. Although I still appeared completely functional to others when standing or walking, I was incapable of retrieving something from the floor without a wall or chair for support - and even then, it wasn't easy and took a long time.

Most people in the room had no idea I was in such bad shape. Basically, just the kids who'd been in my office a lot.

One of them was Caroline, a third grader small for her age, with big brown eyes and a demeanor that was quiet and somewhat shy. But she enjoyed being around people, and was friendly, smart, and perceptive. Caroline was only in my office a lot because she was one of our school mediators, a program that I ran. So she was a problem-solver, not a problem-causer.

At least a full minute had elapsed since I'd dropped the paper. I was continuing with my talk, when suddenly I found Caroline standing directly beneath me, in front of those 600 people, holding out my paper to me without a word, while having to wait a few seconds for me to wind down my sentence and look down to take it. Then she scooted back to her place - which I then saw happened to be in the front line of kids who were seated on the floor.

Clearly it had taken Caroline that full minute or so to reach her decision because she was struggling with the fact that she knew exactly what my predicament was; and yet this wasn't going to be easy for her to do...

To the degree that God's love comes by way of any of us, I think that it arrives singing, "We shall overcome."

Sabbath Journal

What Love Is: Romantic Love. Post #8

2005-06-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

The Cracker of Sex

Lorena suggested a post about romantic love. This may help clarify what love is not.

I have to add that I’m no expert on this one… There’s no chapter on romantic love in A First-Hand Faith! So this is off the cuff.

To me, romantic love is a multi-layered attraction spread upon the cracker of sex. (My writing style has possibly come under the influence of Grumblefish, who has started his own blog, Slit Trench.

Love, which we made a start toward conceptualizing last post, can be one of the layers. But there are a lot of layers on the cracker.

Topping the Cracker of Sex

First usually comes some fig leaf, often topped with a little pimento. Okay, I’ll really stop now. So let’s start with:

Psychosexual Attraction: First, I think there’s some sort of psychosexual attraction which is really hard to describe, but I think or hope everyone will know what I’m talking about so I don’t just sound odd. It’s easiest to give examples.

I remember exactly one other child from my preschool class at age four. The rest are just a bunch of faceless kids romping around on hobby horses. She had brown eyes and brown hair. I wasn’t going to be taking this anywhere physically, and wasn’t focused on her body. But it was a definite boy-girl attraction, the first I can remember. (I’m going to put things in heterosexual terms to keep it simple – not meant to exclude the idea that homosexuals experience romantic love.)

Or the way this attractive woman’s eyes used to catch mine like a magnet a few years ago. It would be the end of the school day at my elementary school. The crowded lobby would be full of parents and children rushing around, and I’d be standing there scanning for the kids I needed to round up to walk over to the nearby extended day program. A couple times a week, a very young mother or very much older sister would enter the lobby, and, Bang! I’d have to pry my eyes loose from this serene, open-looking female face with very dark eyes and high cheek bones and force myself to keep kid-scanning.

Was it love? Although I’m well-disposed to strangers, so this might be described as love in some sense, that certainly wasn’t the main thing going on.

So I think that on top of the physical attraction there’s this hard to define psychosexual attraction. Something gets expressed in the opposite sex’s eyes, voice, manner of speaking, that’s attractive to us.

I’d say that this first layer on the cracker of sex is the essence of “romantic love.” The “chemistry” thing gets involved here. Certain people attract us much more than others.

Why do I call it the cracker of sex? Partly because it’s sort of a fun phrase to keep repeating. But mostly because I think that all these layers of attraction serve the fundamental purpose of driving the sexes together to mate. That might not sound so romantic, but I think that’s gotta be the obvious foundation for all this.

Cheez Whiz Etc.

Other layers of attraction, just off the top of my head:

Esthetic: If I were a painter, I’d have painted a lot of women.

Projective: This is not much the case anymore, but when I was young, I had some sort of psychological tendency to idealize those by whom I was smitten. They would turn into The Ideal Woman. Don’t know the explanation here – maybe Jungian archetypes and all that.

Neurotic forms of complementariness: We’ve all seen this kind of thing. For example, the domineering male finds a submissive female and they form an ongoing abusive relationship based on an unhealthy form of psychological attraction.

And of course love can enter into all of this (less so if the neurotic thing is predominating.) When it does, I’d expect that’s what makes for the most satisfying and long lasting relationships. But I don’t think love itself is an attraction – or if you try to look at it that way, things get muddy fast. “Attraction” is a word I considered but ended up rejecting in thinking about what love is. Attraction is focused at least as much on “what’s in it for me” as it is on the other person.

Dear Paul Landers

Lorena asks two questions:

1. Can partnered or relational love exist apart from the romantic aspect?

Probably. Just think about all the arranged marriages, for example, that have occurred historically.

2. I understand that at points the romance can fade but doesn't it always come back?

My best guess is that when an enduring relationship, in which real love is present, starts off with a strong romantic component, it never totally goes away. I think of my Uncle Paul and Aunt Anita. They had a 50 + year marriage that ended when she died several years ago. In his eighties now, he still can’t refer to her without looking like a man still under the spell of romance as well as love.

I imagine it’s like with anyone else you’ve known long and well. When I look at my little sister, for example, eight years my junior, I don’t just see the grown woman others meet. I see her through a prism of memory that refracts way back to how she looked and acted as a little girl, toddler, and infant, and all the things we ever did together.

So if at ninety you’re lucky enough to still be with someone you fell in love with at sixteen, I bet that you see and experience them through that same sort of memory-prism, and it keeps the romance alive.

What Love Is: Concept v. Definition. Post #6

2005-06-20T09:37:00.000-04:00

Confessions of Blogustine

Really interesting comments to Love #5, Friday 6/17 post. Before I summarize them, I should probably mention a few things at this point.

I’m frankly just sort of muddling my way along here, and for a couple reasons. First, my outlook on this stuff is informed by an unpublished book manuscript I’ve written. But a blogger with an unpublished manuscript who blogs the manuscript itself is viewed as having given up “first rights” by many print publishers. In other words, by putting out the real thing here, I could further reduce what little chance the ms already has of being published due to my lack of “marketing platform” (no public stature).

My impression is that the print publishing world is still trying to figure out the whole Web thing and probably hasn’t got it right yet. Sharing an unpublished ms with half a dozen people = “publishing” it and giving up first rights? It seems odd… I’m still checking into this. Excerpts, to some degree, sound like they may be okay, but I have questions such as: “To what degree??”

Second, even if I could do whatever I wanted, it’s a book, not a series of blog posts. I doubt that I could “blogify” the book’s content in a way that would not diminish the overall message.

Third, as I think about “reviewing” your comments, I’m feeling somewhat self-conscious and like I might come across as pretentious. Who am I to be sort of evaluating what you’ve got to say? You’re all obviously bright, reflective types. And in all honesty, I didn’t learn that much in divinity school. I’ve forgotten most of it.

So what follows are my real qualifications for doing a blog in which I’m not actually posting A First-Hand Faith, even though the perspective I bring to the blog is informed by it. That’s the working title of the book, anyway, so you’ll know what I’m talking about if I ever post something like, “excerpt, First-Hand Faith.” The book has a subtitle that better gets to the heart of the subject matter – but titles aren’t copyrightable, so I’m going to reserve that portion of it for now, hoping for publication.

Here I’ll just mention that the subtitle clarifies that a “first-hand” faith is a faith that we answer to rather than invent. We only call back to what calls us. “First-hand” doesn’t mean something originating with our ability to think clever thoughts, or, as conservatives sometimes say, something tantamount to, “making it up as we go along.”

What happened personally is that at age twenty-three, I had a pretty substantial “enlightenment experience.” It turned my life around, but I couldn’t absorb it quickly. (I know I’ll die without having absorbed anywhere near the whole thing.)

Everything that would follow in terms of my spiritual life was initiated by that experience. And everything in A First-Hand Faith developed from out of this experience as I learned more about getting out of its way of proceeding with me. The book’s concept of love is something that eventually came out of this.

A Concept of Love

A couple of you have politely asked, “Why bother?” when it comes to defining love. But what I’m really talking about is a concept of love. You can extract a definition from a concept as a handy way of referring to it, but the concept is what I found important.

How? The concept of love, like all the concepts in the book, evolved by way of reflecting on experience. And then, sticking close to experience. I learned that at least for me, going out on long metaphysical limbs is a mistake. After a while I really don’t have any idea what I’m talking about anymore, so how could/why would I want to convince anyone else?

But a concept that reflects and highlights experience, and makes it less nebulous, so that it has a bit of a handle on it – to revert to G-Fish’s “most important piece of luggage” metaphor – can be useful. In the case of love, once you know your own love, and how big it is, and what its business is, you start to become less tolerant of your inner obstacles to love. (And in my case, you end up coming up with a couple concepts for those too…)

So although I know I’m nothing special in terms of my inner life, I’ve been motivated to do something fairly unusual. For the fourteen years following that experience at age 23, my number one priority was to fathom its implications as far as possible. Then came the illness. Then, with the illness making it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere, came getting back to the book a couple years ago, and finishing it.

So what I’m trying to say is that I hope I don’t come off here as being some sort of know it all, or thinking I’m exceptional. If I thought so, it would be a total bummer. What would be the point of writing a book if I thought it only had validity for me?

So at this point, the “spiritual blog methodology” (now there’s a handy phrase…) that I seem to be stumbling into, is mainly to ask you to think about this stuff for yourselves. Because I don’t think any of us are that different in terms of the essential composition of our inner lives. And while our specific paths differ, I think we move along the same general landscape when it comes to spiritual matters.

I’ve run on so long here that I won’t get to those comments to the Friday 6/17 post until Wednesday! But thought I should let you know where I’m coming from.

What Love Is: Focusing-In. Post #5

2005-06-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

First, a brief announcement…

No, I’m not getting married or having twins, although I did receive a bag of pre-shelled pistachios the other day. It was my first time.

I really enjoy this blog. However, I MUST cut back on the time I’m putting into it. The disability slows me down, and there’s a lot I’m trying to do in addition to the blog that’s highly related to it. Like continuing with the effort to find a publisher for the book. (By the way, the title of chapter one is, What Love Is.) That might not come as much of a shocker at this point…)

But I want to try and cut down on my blogging time in a way that doesn’t make the blog less worth checking in with.

So I’ll be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If I get the chance, I’ll do extra posts occasionally. I’ll keep reading/responding to all comments, whatever day they’re left.

If I get the days mixed up, which happens fairly easily when you’re housebound, then I’ll be posting on that odd Tuesday or Thursday instead. But the MWF commitment will probably heighten my day of the week consciousness. If not, you might want to comment with, “Fous! Oubliez la jour encore??”

Sharpening the Focus

I’m wondering if I may have started out by asking too broad a question: in effect, asking people to say what Love with a capital L is.

You’ve mainly come back with examples of love.

Let’s try something in-between. What does love mean to you? But don’t only provide an example or metaphor. So if you’re going to say, “Love Is Walking Hand in Hand” (Charles Schultz), also attach some kind of concept to it; here, maybe something like, “Love is a feeling of affection.”

A Break from Love

2005-06-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

Who needs that, you ask?

Nancy Nordenson. Not in any personal sense that I’d be in any position to know about, I hasten to add. It’s just that she passed this on to me to pass on to others. Since a lot of you who've been commenting have blogs yourselves, consider yourselves “tagged” if you want to be. That is, answer the questions that follow for yourselves on your own blogs, and pass the format on to other bloggers.

Nancy strikes me as the same sort of thoughtful person that’s been tending to post comments here. And just to prove that, she wrote a book called “Just Thinking,” and has her own blog with an equally suggestive title, the link to which appears at the bottom of this post because for some reason that's the only place I can make it go.

The “tag” idea is about reading habits, with the main purpose of suggesting good books for others to read.

Book Tag

Total books ever owned: Several hundred.

Last book I bought: I can’t tell you because I don’t want to get sued. It was a really really bad book in the spirituality area that I bought to look through when doing the “market analysis” portion of my book proposal.

Nancy was kind enough to ask how that’s going. Badly. I think it was in Literary Marketplace that I read that no matter how good the book is or how well qualified you are to write it, sending out nonfiction proposals with no “marketing platform” is a “waste of your time.” I’ve gone a long way toward proving that point.

I am currently reading: Blogs and the additional two books I’ve written – I can’t help myself. But the severity of my disability means it’s very tough for me to read except on the computer screen.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

The New Testament – I’m not much for scripture quoting, either in real life or in my manuscript, but it’s the only book I’ve read more than once – probably half a dozen times. (Just never generally been a re-reader, don’t know why.) Certain NT ideas and phrases have had far-reaching implications for me and for the manuscript I wrote.

Goldstein, Joseph and Jack Kornfield. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation. Boston: Shambhala, 1987. A great intro to Buddhism for westerners.

Hanh, Thich N. The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1975. A beautiful, simple, short book. Wherever you’re at in terms of your inner life, it’s probably going to challenge you to be an even better person than you are.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, 1902. An oldie but a goodie.

To anyone who took Psych 101, James is just an archaic figure from early psychology. But in the area of religious studies, this book is considered a classic. It was on the required reading list when I got my MA at the U. of Chicago divinity school. James basically asks, “What is ‘religious experience?’” and separates the wheat from the chaff.

Smith, Huston. The Religions of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Another oldie but goodie. There must be an updated version of this that probably doesn’t have “man” in the title… But it’s a very clear, well written and concise summary of each of the world’s major religions.

By the way, doing “tag” doesn’t require all the bibliographical detail I’ve provided. I cut and pasted from my manuscript’s bibliography...

Just Thinking would be that link I mentioned...

What Love Is: Unselfish Love. Post #4

2005-06-15T15:04:00.000-04:00

The concept of unselfish love seems to be religion’s way of getting at “the real thing" when it comes to love. It occurs to me that the secular word for this idea is “altruism.” I’ve never especially liked that word, but when it comes to talking about religion and spirituality, words are loaded with connotations for people. This is another good reason for trying to clarify terms.

It was interesting to me to see the similarities between love as defined first in Buddhist and then in Christian terms as I surfed the Web.

Love, Buddhism:

The definition of love in Buddhism is: wanting others to be happy.
This love is unconditional and it requires a lot of courage and acceptance (including self-acceptance).
The "near enemy" of love, or a quality which appears similar, but is more an opposite is: conditional love (selfish love, see also the page on attachment).
The opposite is wanting others to be unhappy: anger, hatred.
A result which one needs to avoid is: attachment.
This definition means that 'love' in Buddhism refers to something quite different from the ordinary term of love which is usually about attachment, more or less successful relationships and sex; all of which are rarely without self-interest. Instead, in Buddhism it refers to de-tachment and the unselfish interest in others' welfare.

From The Four Immeasurables

Christian Love (“agape”):

Two Definitions

1. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.
2. Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.

From Answers.com http://www.answers.com/agape&r=67

The following similar definition of Christian love is from a Christian Web site:

Christian love is giving to others those things that you would want them to give you if you were in their situation -- and it's doing so even if they can't pay you back. In fact, it's doing so especially if they can't pay you back! Christian love is respect for others. It's mercy. It's charity.

From Christian Love http://www.allaboutgod.com/christian-love.htm

Comment with Question

Freud thought that the concept of a universal love that “rains on the just and unjust alike,” so to speak, devalued love. A love that doesn’t depend on the existence of laudable qualities in the beloved made no sense to him.

Is there any way to reconcile the idea of a selfless, universal love, with the “hot” love we feel for those whose qualities we find attractive or commendable? Or is love like hot jazz and cool jazz? If so, what makes both “jazz?”

Essays on this topic are due June 30.

What Love Is: Primary Colors. Post #3

2005-06-14T18:51:00.000-04:00

Complications

People’s comments to yesterday’s post include mention of love in relation to God and the topic of self-love. I’d like to set these aside for the time being. It’s a lot easier to think about love of God and love of self once you have an idea of what you mean by “love” to begin with, especially since love of God and self-love introduce complications of their own. (Example: self-love vs. selfishness or egotism.)

G-fish brings up what I think is an important point that all of us have to look at, but again, for now, a complication of the topic, when he writes:

“I am still learning the differences between what's right for {my son}, and what I think he ought to think is right for him (hence the many tooth marks in my tongue).”

G-Fish is getting at two ideas here: A) love for his son, and B) something that has potential to get in the way of that. Obstacles to what love is – this is a major topic in its own right. But again, first things first: What is love?

It’s easiest to get a clear picture of what love is by reflecting on our experience of it in relation to persons that we love.

Primary Colors

So again: when you focus quietly on someone you love – hopefully, and sort of ironically, without them being around as a distraction – what exactly do you experience? You’ve provided a lot of vivid examples, such as

“my husband waking me up at 7 am with a fresh cup of Starbucks espresso roast coffee , kissing my sleepy head, and me saying "thank you babe" while being fully aware of the true joy of the moment and very grateful for his caring action” –Marybeth

Gratitude… joy in the moment… caring action… These look like possibilities worth looking at.

G-Fish refers to the “transparency” of his daughter’s love on a certain occasion when she was little. Was anything visible in that transparency?

Emilyjane refers to “unconditional” love in terms of love that loves despite imperfections in the loved one.

What’s essential in all this? What are the primary colors of love? Life of Bryan asks if there is one “pure” form of love. Essentially, I think so.

What Love Is: Why Bother? Post #2

2005-06-13T17:50:00.000-04:00

Anybody have any luck with just closing their eyes per yesterday’s post? If not, here’s some food for thought about what love is from Answers.com.

The stuff on this link goes all over the place. Anything here you find worth picking up on – or not worth picking up on, i.e., something is being discussed which, in your opinion, is definitely not love and should be distinguished from it?

Why try to figure out exactly what love is? Why try to understand what the experience of love is really like?

Because it turns out to be a very big thing. Because becoming conscious enough of what love is, is itself transformative.

And because all of us have it in us. If enough of us were ever to become conscious of it, it might save the world, or postpone the Apocalypse, depending on your point of view. At the least, it would increase the odds of our species having a long run on this planet. And between now and the end, the human race would be have had a much better time all around.

Maybe it would be good to focus for now on what it means to love other people. The link above goes into love of God as well – the ultimate, “link above,” of course, metaphor unintended. Anyway, if we try and introduce God into things at this point, matters might get complicated fast. So maybe to start, we should just stick with people, although I’d go wherever anyone wants to…

What Love Is: Post #1

2005-06-12T21:02:00.000-04:00

Let’s again look directly at the topic of religious/spiritual experience with a post that’s completely free of poetry and foreign language – n’est pas? Couldn’t help that, but there will be no more of it.

Specifically, let’s continue with love. It certainly plays a prominent role in religion, and is also a common human experience, confusing as the topic can be.

Love is something I’ve read quite a bit about, what with degrees in psych, religion, and counseling. Most of what I read described different kinds of love. Examples:

Platonic love: love of friends.

Eros: love of one’s partner or mate.

Lactos: love of dairy products.

Yes, that last one was meant as something of a commentary. I’ve never found love-typologies up to the job, although I do think they have something to contribute.

I don’t think they really tell us the fifty-seven varieties of love. Instead, I think they offer up ideas concerning what kinds of things it’s possible for us to love – and, in contrast, not love.

Looking at these things can start to tell us something about what love is, but that’s a long and winding road.

To me, a better route is closing your eyes, bringing someone you love to mind, then thinking about what it is you’re feeling.

Oh, Mirror in the Blog, What Is Love

2005-06-10T14:37:00.000-04:00

In a comment yesterday, Mary Beth basically asks,

“So why are we talking about dogs, music, and sex?” It does seem like a reasonable question…

I was just being indirect. We’d been talking about religious belief and religious/spiritual experience. There seemed to be a lot of agreement that love is a form of experience that’s widely regarded as being religious or spiritual. I’d add here, as an example, that the compassion for all sentient beings found in Buddhism is a pretty close parallel to “agape,” or the Christian concept of universal love. I’m less familiar with Judaism, but know that the Old Testament presents God’s merciful as well as wrathful aspects. And of course Jesus was Jewish, a mind-bogglingly overlooked fact in the history of anti-Semitism.

I read the Koran a very long time ago, but I’d be surprised if love and compassion in some form isn’t a major theme there too, especially since Mohammed is thought to have read the Bible and was writing from out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, much as he started a new one. (Tarquin, are you around? Can you shed any light here?)

So what I was actually doing in the last few posts was posting material that I thought illustrated something about love, thinking someone might venture what they think love is.

Or, as Stevie Nicks might have said…

More Commonalities in Experience than Belief?

2005-06-06T17:26:00.000-04:00

Comments to the “Experientialism?” post by Emily Jane and Mary Beth, bring a couple things to mind.

First, so far there’s unanimous agreement in reply to Matthew. Matthew raises the question of whether anything is to be gained by religious/spiritual discussion among people who have different views over what constitutes compelling grounds for belief.

Mary Beth brings up the idea of discussion as a cooperative “exploration” instead of having the focus be on proving oneself right. She sees this sort of discussion as sometimes leading to spiritual insight and growth.

Emily Jane raises the question: What is love? Once it’s disentangled from a lot of the stuff that people often entangle it with, I'd say it’s an important form of religious/spiritual experience.

Which makes me want to add:

To me, Matthew’s question reflects the fact that although it can be informative and helpful to exchange ideas about beliefs, it’s hard to finally expect agreement with people who have come to different belief-conclusions. The model for how people arrive at their beliefs that was recently suggested by Life of Bryan may help point to why. Often we inherit our religious beliefs culturally. Whether, for example, we are Christians, Jews, or Muslims, probably has a lot to do with who our parents are, and where we are from.

This is one reason that although I am interested in both religious belief and experience, the domain of experience appears to me to hold more opportunity for recognizing common ground. I’ve referred in previous posts to the contemplative (meditative) practices found across traditions, and to the qualitative similarites among the experiences which these practices foster.

The gist is often a sense of being “one with the universe,” or “one with God.” (Many of us have had at least a taste of this in, “one with nature” experiences.) The oneness of these experiences has a lot to do with their characteristic “ineffability.” Words make distinctions – you might say that’s the business they're in – while the crux of this important, and even central kind of religious experience, is the absence of distinctions.

Many people think first of “visions and voices” when it comes to religious experience. Yet the great Christian mystics, even when they’ve had such experiences – I’m thinking of St. Theresa, and St. John of the Cross – seemed to put less stock in them than in their experiences of oneness. As I recall, one or both of them even tended to suspect the visions/voices often as not come from Satan!

My take on this is that the more colorful experiences may often have more to say about psychology than spirituality.

“Experientialism?” and: Grounds for Belief

2005-06-04T19:20:00.000-04:00

“Religious Experientialism?”

Commenting to yesterday’s June 3 post, Mathew asks for clarification on my perspective. Referring to my line,

Though we may not fully know the meaning of life, we may fully live it,

Matthew asks if I might not actually have meant: To fully live life is to know its meaning.

That’s only what I mean if by the word, “know,” you refer to knowledge in the sense of immediate experience – as distinct from rational explanation or intellectual knowledge. I would also want to add the major qualifier that this immediate and experiential knowledge that can impart meaning to our lives, at least as far as I’ve been able to apprehend it, isn’t anything like complete knowledge, or, The Knowledge of Life’s Meaning.

Instead, what I’ve found to be true is that it’s possible to come to know certain things that might be described as occurring at the interface of our own being with God’s. Of course I’m not being especially clear, but there’s just so much you can do on a blog post…

As far as whether I think of myself as an existentialist, I don’t, but I can see why that would cross your mind, given my emphasis on experience. I can think of at least two big reasons for not placing myself in that category. I should add that these are based on impressions I have of existentialism without ever having studied it – I just read a couple things by Camus and Sartre a long time ago.

It’s my impression that:

Existentialists are ultimately pessimistic, in contrast to my own faith perspective.

Existentialists deny absolute truths. I think they belong to the broader category of “humanist.” I affirm certain absolutes while acknowledging my inability to comprehend what faith tells me may be their full implications. My outlook is definitely “spiritual” - I would want to say, “religious” - and not humanist.

Maybe I’m a “religious experientialist,” but this seems like a mouthful, plus we haven’t formed a society yet…

Particular Beliefs and Grounds for Belief

Matthew then looks further into the topic of belief:

“An existentialist, an empiricist and a rationalist walk into a bar. Can they have any meaningful discussion about belief beyond its proper grounds?"

"In other words: is it useful to discuss particular beliefs with a person if you don't agree on the proper grounds for belief?”

{I should say that, after typing the two paragraphs below, I saw Mbaines’ reply to Matt on yesterday’s post. I think I like his remark on this point better than mine. People may want to have a look…}

With those three particular examples, wouldn’t they have quite a bit in common in what they see as adequate grounds for belief? Or, if there’s a punch line, that could be interesting! But I think your larger question is: When people disagree over what they see as adequate grounds for belief, isn’t that going to muddle-up any attempt at discussing their particular beliefs?

Seems that way to me. Therefore I would think that any prolonged discussion by people who are genuinely interested in each other’s differing perspectives on religion and spirituality, would probably get down to grounds for belief at some point. Even if they still found they disagreed, they would have a better understanding of why. And there’s always the chance that they would find their own perspectives refined or modified in some way.

Orientations Toward What Matters

2005-06-02T17:24:00.000-04:00

Taking your three most recent comments - to the May 10 and June 1 posts - we have three interesting ideas. The two basic topics I’ve proposed are:

What do we think of as “God,” which we should probably broaden to include: what do we consider to be of utmost spiritual importance; and,

What, in terms of belief or experience, is the basis for our orientation toward God - or toward what we find most meaningful in life?

G-Fish, whose comments are best read for themselves because my paraphrases severely constrain them, I think is making the following central point with regard to the idea of any sort of absolute revelation: How would you absolutely know that you knew?

Mary Beth’s comment refers to the wholeness and mystery of all things; to love; and to the importance of trying to proceed further in the way of love. These are matters that I find central as well. Regarding love, this would have to be among the top candidates for something that all religions find important and that crosses readily into the experiential domain of nonbelievers as well. Of course there’s considerable confusion around exactly what love is and means.

Andy’s prior comment indicated his belief in Jesus as uniquely one with God, and in Jesus' status as a person in the Holy Trinity. Andy’s new comment finds some common ground with diverging points of view, then goes on: “I am not a conservative evangelical Christian, by which I mean I don't think I know the answer to everything.” I have two reactions:

First, it’s always great to find someone with traditional beliefs who fully respects the views of others and can engage them in conversation about religious matters. Second, something in my mind went, Bingo!

It never occurred to me before. Maybe ultra-conservative Christians are distinguished by their style at least as much as by their substance. No matter how conservative a person’s belief system is, if they can discuss religious/spiritual matters without a subtext of, “And I know I’m right and you’re wrong,” and without the often added implication of, “And so you’re going to hell” – well, it just gives a completely different impression, and introduces possibilities for mutual listening and hearing that otherwise don’t exist.

I have to say that in so far as you can “meet” people through virtual contact, I really like the people who have been posting comments. A great group of sincere people with somewhat varied outlooks and a common interest.

Experience, Consciousness, and Jesus

2005-06-01T16:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday’s “Experience of God” post started to consider experience, along with belief, in relation to how we orient ourselves toward various conceptualizations of God - such as the three concepts sketched in the May 30 “Belief in God…” post. Yesterday’s post concluded:

"In any case, it’s safe to say that religion is rooted in experience. While the institutional Christian church has emphasized the beliefs and rituals that it has elaborated around Jesus Christ, Jesus himself was not raised Christian! He came to experience and understand something for himself."

What I had in mind here was my assumption that the founders of every world religion, being human, would have come to their understanding of God or spiritual truth by way of intense first-hand experiences. My thought was that it would have been these first-hand experiences and insights that led them to start what would become new traditions.

Here is an excerpt from Andy’s comment about this:

"Personally, I do believe He really was the Son of God, born of a virgin, and that in the Trinity He and God are One. So while I also believe that he was fully human, when it came to matters of the spirit I don't think He ever 'learned' anything, for in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. A time never existed when Jesus did not have full knowledge."

I have two reactions. First, I want to mention that belief in Jesus as being uniquely one with God is the Christian perspective on “God as Other” which I outlined in the May 30 post. And I continue to wonder, as I did there, what it is that makes this belief, or belief in other concepts of God, compelling to believers. People might want to comment in general terms if sharing their personal basis for belief is too – well, personal.

Second, as Andy mentions, a Christian understanding of Jesus as an incarnation of God still acknowledges Jesus’ full humanity. Here I would say that processes of growth and development, physical, mental, and spiritual, are quintessential aspects of being human. I can’t escape the idea of Jesus learning, developing, and undergoing some kind of experiential process – one that I would assume was passionate, intense, and contained elements of struggle – before he was ready for his ministry.

Although the New Testament offers no information concerning such formative processes in Jesus’ life, there are certainly scenes in which we find the adult Jesus engaged in what appears to be a process of struggle and reflection, as in praying in the garden prior to his crucifixion.

Another way of putting this would be in terms of growth in consciousness. I have trouble picturing Jesus as an infant, a twelve year old, and a thirty year old, being equally conscious of his identity and message.

So perhaps the idea is that in some metaphysical/theological/ultimate/unseen manner - one that allowed for his experiential growth and development in consciousness as a human being - Jesus is uniquely one with God.

But this does raise the question: Couldn't all of us be one with God in such a hidden sense? This leads back to Thomas’ perspective and the possibility of Jesus as someone who came to save us in the sense of helping to lead us toward consciousness of who we really are.

Experience of God

2005-05-31T19:19:00.000-04:00

While no one’s weighed in yet on what sort of conceptualization of God (per yesterday’s “Belief In God…”) might be most adequate – and what makes belief in such a God compelling – Emily Jane points to the route of approaching God through experience. Here’s a quote with link from her extended comment:

"If the Whole is likened to the Ocean, and the part to a drop, the Sufi {Islamic mystic} says that witnessing the Ocean with the eye of a drop is impossible. However, when the drop becomes one with the Ocean, it sees the Ocean with the eye of the Ocean."

http://www.nimatullahi.org/us/WIS/WIS2.html

Emily Jane adds:

"Hey, I don't pretend to understand this. I do wonder, however, what Christianity would be like today if it had retained a strong mystical component. One could interpret Christ's statement, "I and the Father are one" mystically rather than literally. Likewise, Jesus saying, "He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am and I shall be he." Christian mystics got burned alive but Christ didn't, because Christ was considered to be God incarnate and they were considered to be heretics…"

I haven’t read the Gospel of Thomas, but it’s my understanding that it was written in the same time frame as the books that became the New Testament, but was left out of the canon as not conforming to the doctrines that were taking shape in the early church. If I understand correctly, Thomas presents Jesus not as a someone who viewed himself as uniquely one with God, and essentially different from the rest of us, but as a teacher trying to convey to his followers that all of us are one with God and called to awaken to this reality.

This is certainly not the Christianity I grew up with. And yet certainly there are passages in the existing canon that appear to point us all in an experiential direction: “The kingdom of heaven is within you” comes to mind as a quick example.

The fact is that in historical terms, we do see Jesus “through a glass darkly.” The New Testament sets down stories and sayings about him that first circulated for decades as oral traditions. So a great deal of interpretation was going on even before anything was put into writing. What message was Jesus trying to convey? How well did his disciples understand?

In any case, it’s safe to say that religion is rooted in experience. While the institutional Christian church has emphasized the beliefs and rituals that it has elaborated around Jesus Christ, Jesus himself was not raised Christian! He came to experience and understand something for himself.

Belief in God: That Other Trinity…

2005-05-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

To pick up where the May 26 post left off, and adding in a comment from Emily Jane, we’re left with the following:

Reason and Experience: Experience through the five senses and reason are generally the basis for our beliefs and the practical decisions we make negotiating the day to day world. They’re also the basis for science and the technology that often comes from it. The scientific method is a formalized process through which experience and reason are used for gathering information and forming beliefs (theories) about the world.

Like everybody else, theists arrive at most of their beliefs about the nature of reality through reason and experience. Yet reason and experience are not their sole or primary basis for believing in God.

(Deists appear to be another matter, per the links I posted yesterday. I just glanced at the links, but it looks as though Deists may deem experience and reason sufficient for belief in God. But wouldn’t there be a much greater consensus over God’s existence if that were the case? Anyway, I just bring this up as an aside, and have not looked into it.)

So if we believe in God on the basis of something other than experience and reason, what would that be?

God as Other: On May 26th’s post, I offered the following as a basic generic definition of God that I thought most western believers would subscribe to – and, as far as I can tell, it is this God to which atheists generally refer when they state that they do not believe:

God: The radical Other. An Entity existing in ontological distinction from the rest of reality. A Creator who brought the rest of reality into being as His/Her creation.

The Oceanic God: Now Emily Jane offers this by way of an alternative conception of God:

I’m not sure everyone would agree that God is “the radical other.” We are not God, but some believe we are part of God (as is all of creation). In other words, we are not the ocean, but we are a drop of seawater. We aren’t stars, but we are stardust. Some people believe God is no-thing, but God is in everything.

It seems to me this comes closer to the God of many poets, artists, and contemplatives. Read, for example, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or The Cloud of Unknowing authored by an anonymous monk, in the eleventh or twelfth century, I think. Oneness or Unity – that’s the big theme here.

This raises some questions, such as: Is the basis for holding to a concept of God along the lines of an Ocean in relation to which we are a something like drops, the same as for belief in a Creator existing in distinction from the rest of His/Her creation? And what is the relationship between these “two Gods,” so to speak?

God the Somewhat Other: Historically, Christians have at times been pretty uncomfortable with assertions about experiencing unity with God, sometimes going to the extreme of burning Christian mystics alive.

You can also see the tension between God as Other and Oceanic God in Christian theology. (Probably Jewish and Islamic too, but I’ve done little reading there.) I think it’s fair to say that most Christians most of the time have wanted it both ways, and that Christian theology tends to reflect this. Christians have generally wanted to point to some form of “God above,” or God the Father. While God the Son has been viewed as the critical human-divine connection, I think there has always been a widespread desire for a more immediate presence - "God here and now," so to speak. So you’ve got that third person of the Trinity…

Or I think of theologian Paul Tillich using the phrase, “the ground of being” to refer to God. This reads to me like an attempt to modify God’s Otherness without abolishing it. As the ground of being, God is both distinct from the rest of reality and intimately connected with it.

What’s your conception of God, and on what basis have you arrived at it? Or, if you reject the idea of God, do you reject all three Gods that I’ve mentioned, or only one or two?

BBQ with A Couple Deists

2005-05-29T16:59:00.000-04:00

I'm continuing to tread water over Memorial Day weekend in order to keep the May 26 topic afloat long enough for people to see it. Meanwhile, someone asked about Deism and its connection to the founding fathers.

So here's a link to a definition of Deism: deism definition.

And here's another to a Deist Web site: World Union of Deists.

All this time I was thinking that George Washington was a dentist because of the many wooden teeth allusions.

Straddling the Fence and Treading Water

2005-05-28T20:52:00.000-04:00

I’ll keep treading water over Memorial Day weekend so as to keep the May 26, post “Science and Religion II,” floating out there long enough to continue that conversation if enough people want to.

For now, I’ll just post an excerpt from an Mbaines comment re. God as I defined God at the end of that post – a definition people may or may not agree with. (It wasn’t revealed.)

“{God} could be real though. Since I don't ‘believe,’ I consider myself atheist rather than agnostic or a deist.”

Simple as this statement is, to me it’s a great example of setting the sort of tone that allows people of different views concerning religion to discuss the topic with the possibility of hearing each other.

Some believers view atheists as opponents of righteousness and virtue - God-hating secularists who’ll be thrown into the fire ahead of everyone else on Judgment Day. Some atheists add to their “devilish appearance” in the eyes of these believers by condemning belief in God as “nothing but” superstitious ignorance. (Re. “nothing buttery,” that’s on the May 26 post too.) When this kind of strident tone is struck on either side, advocates for their positions come across as claiming to know something with an air of absolute certainty that makes the other side out to be either morally or intellectually bankrupt.

MB, in contrast, respects believers by acknowledging the possibility that belief in God may be reality-based. He goes on to clarify that atheism itself is a belief: it is his belief that God (at least as I defined the term) does not exist, that makes him an atheist rather than an agnostic.

His statement is clear, honest, and engaging, yet without trying to bait anyone emotionally. One thing in particular that engages me is his reference to agnosticism.

It seems to me that atheists are typically taken to “claim” that God does not exist, while agnostics say they don’t know. By saying that as an atheist he doesn’t know either, Mbaines makes it clear that with regard to the subject of belief in God, there is in reality a single belief/disbelief continuum. Believers are inclined toward belief with varying degrees of conviction. Nonbelievers are inclined toward disbelief with varying degrees of conviction.

And I bet most agnostics actually lean one way or another. Being a “true agnostic,” and sitting right on the fence, might be the hardest position of all to maintain!

Science and Religion II: Reductionism, Belief-Basis

2005-05-26T21:03:00.001-04:00

MODIFIED FOR OF

No Dunces Here…

First, off, nobody's impugning anyone's intelligence for giving credence to the possibility of intelligent design. I appreciate how diverse the people looking at this blog are. I just wish I had more time to “drum up business” and get a larger number of you so I could become a famous disabled blogger and have some kind of shot at the “marketing platform” required to get nonfiction published. (So I have an ulterior motive for doing this blog as well as the inherent interest. Maybe I’ll post a “Confessions of Blogustine” someday…)

In fact I particularly appreciate Life of Bryan posting to a blog that I think anybody would label “progressive" - because I’m thinking, LB, that you have somewhat conservative leanings, at least about some things. (Actually, so do I. Maybe another future post.) A lot of people only want to get their preexisting opinions confirmed by talking to the like-minded, so I admire anyone willing to genuinely “diablog.”

To me, two seriously interesting points are raised overall by the latest comments. You could count three if we wanted to get into the evolution/creationism subject. I’d prefer not trying to go into the details on that one, only because I know that I’m not knowledgeable enough about the science to go into any depth. I do have an opinion, but one based on observations about human behavior, and inferences from that, rather than on knowing the science. (If anybody’s interested in the opinion, I could state it briefly next post.)

Reductionism

Anyway, I think Matthew sharpens the focus by stating: “Science is essentially empirical: it only deals with the measurable and reproducible aspects of our sensory experience.” Science can tell us a lot about the world as we are able to come into contact with it through our five senses (although you could make a solid case that science doesn’t do enough with smell), but it doesn’t necessarily tell us about everything that is.

For one thing, who on earth knows what the full context of reality is? Cosmologists, for example, are divided on whether this is the only universe that exists. “Where were you when I set the far borders of the world?” so to speak. Cosmeticians point in yet other directions.

For another thing, things can't be reduced to science's explanations of how they work.

The article Emily Jane cites for us gets into some interesting details on evolution vs. creationism – the kind I feel inadequate to delve into for lack of a sufficient knowledge-base. I also think the first paragraph or two is implicitly reductionistic, and I’m guessing that’s what bugged Life of Bryan. (EJ’s own position is definitely not reductionistic per one of her comments.)

Martin Marty is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He taught a course I took on religion and issues of modernity (e.g., conflicts with science), and had a phrase for reductionism: “nothing buttery.” If I recall correctly, he didn’t coin the term, and was quoting someone else.

Example of “nothing buttery”: Emily Jane can be described (at least theoretically) as a collection of subatomic particles interacting in a particular manner. Therefore, she's “nothing but” a bunch of subatomic particles - right?

If this were true, then when she was a kid, her Mom would have called her in for supper with, “Hey! Subatomic Particles! Time to eat!” Probably didn't happen.

Another example: We know that brain wave activity occurs when we think or have any kind of experience – say, for example, a religious or spiritual one. So any thought or experience is supposedly reduced to being nothing but patterns of brain waves. But notice how nobody ever says, “A penny for your pattern of brain waves.”

This is because new properties emerge when subatomic and biological stuff (to use the science term) is put together in certain ways. You and I are not in fact nothing but collections of subatomic particles, even though, at one level, that’s a good description of us.

“Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-196-1619264,00.html

And so to me, this excerpt from the beginning of the article EJ provides implies reductionism (again, not her point of view.) It indicates that doing science subtracts from the mystery of being. This can only be the case, as far as I can tell, if explaining how something works somehow reduces it to being “nothing but” the explanation. In reality, science doesn’t subtract from anything. It adds information.

And on to the thing that usually makes people not talk about religion…

The second thing to come into focus is as follows: If atheists see experience and reason as the only compelling basis for believing anything, while theists also view reason and experience as compelling, yet recognize some additional basis for belief –specifically, for belief in God – then what might the nature of that basis be?

In other words: What sorts of experiences/thoughts lead believers to believe?

It would also be worth checking on whether everyone’s in agreement over a basic definition of God. I think the basic definition for the majority of theists and atheists alike is God as radical Other. An Entity existing in distinction from the rest of reality. A Creator who brought the rest of reality into being as His/Her creation.

A Big Topic: Science and Religion

2005-05-25T16:45:00.000-04:00

Comments from Life of Bryan and Mbaines to yesterday’s post bring up the subject of science and religion.

Life of Bryan:

“Seems like in the field of ‘Science’ there are a lot of intelligent folks that don't believe in the concept of God, and work tirelessly to prove their personal truth via scientific methods/discovery.”

Mbaines:

“I just wonder why {religious} belief exists when the answers to the questions that precipitate belief are all being provided using the scientific method. The harm that is done by such beliefs is evidenced by poll after poll which show a large majority of people disavow the fact that animals evolve.”

The relation of religion and science receives a lot of attention. For sure there are people out there who, for one thing, know a lot more about science that I do. But for starters, this is how I’m seeing it at this point:

It seems to me that science is fundamentally, A) a method – a way of arriving at beliefs concerning the nature of reality, and B) a growing body of findings and theories arrived at by using the scientific method.

Scientific Findings v. Religion I’m one of those who see nothing incompatible with viewing the Bible as the Word of God and at the same time recognizing that it was written by human beings who, however divinely inspired, were in fact living before the rise of science. The Bible is not a work of science. It just isn’t. Science didn’t exist when it was written.

So I think that believers err when they try to view the Bible as a book of natural science. In another post I mentioned the medieval world’s citation of scripture to support the view that the sun revolves around the earth. It was a long time ago, but in divinity school I remember reading about many additional cases of religion having to finally give in when faced with well-supported scientific findings.

Without going into detail – we could, but plenty of other blogs are doing this – I view the current evolution v. "creation science” debate as the latest example in the misguided attempt to make science out of scripture.

Many if not most believers already recognize the mistakenness of trying to ascribe scientific validity to scriptural remarks concerning the natural world that were written in pre-scientific times. So they don’t find that scientific findings pose a threat to their faith. A good example here is the theologian Teilhard de Chardin, whose theology is premised on the theory of evolution.

The Real Debate: Grounds for Belief First, let’s be clear that this isn’t a debate between scientists and believers. There are plenty of scientists who believe in God, and some pretty good ones, like Albert Einstein.

The real debate is over what constitutes compelling grounds for belief. Scientific beliefs and religious beliefs, even when the same person holds them, are held on different grounds.

Here I think that perhaps the most useful thing to look at is the different perspectives held by theists and atheists, especially if we can strip away what I frankly think is a lot of nonsense that often goes on when these two camps talk with each other. Theists can come off as shrill and threatened, viewing atheists as monstrous God-hating infidels, as it were. Atheists often come off as equally threatened, and I think this is because some of them are preoccupied with reacting against religious beliefs that they grew up with. So some atheists do go into an attack mode that can make them sound a bit like maybe monstrous God-hating infidels, and in their enthusiasm, some toss out arguments - for example, reductionism - that are what might be termed "scientistic," and are not genuinely scientific at all. (We could talk more about this, but not to digress…)

When you strip away all of this stuff, you get, to my mind, one major difference between atheists and theists that underlies the obvious one. Maybe you could call it a difference in meta-beliefs.

Atheists believe experience and reason are the only compelling basis for belief. The observations, experiments, hypotheses, and theories of science are a formalization and extension of the experience and reason that guide the overwhelming majority of us in negotiating the everyday world. We don’t quit our jobs on faith that a better opportunity will arise. We require good reason to believe that a better opportunity exists before we say, "I quit."

So theists believe in experience and reason too. What they reject is the idea that there are no other compelling grounds for holding a belief.

Reminders for Theists and Atheists The majority of theists aren’t right-wing extremists advocating the establishment of a theocracy. Belief plays a constructive rather than destructive role in their lives. It provides meaning, a sense of community, and for many, fosters a desire to serve others.

The heart of atheism isn’t a mindless attack on everything wonderful and good – and in particular, God. It’s a sincere conviction that beliefs that are not based on reason or experience are likely to lead us astray. They aren’t launching a frontal attack on God, but rejecting the idea of God in passing, so to speak, on the basis of what they genuinely view as a larger concern with truth, and even Truth.

Of course theists are also concerned with Truth. They would feel it was a real bummer, to say the least, if it should turn out there’s no truth to the idea of God.

Crime and Punishment

2005-05-24T18:42:00.000-04:00

Sharp comments! I should confiscate them and search your cells for more.

Theoretical Matters

Matthew:

"In fact, the excuses we make to justify our own wrongdoing seem to be the bestproof of all that evil is not always done out of ignorance. As far as I can tell, a person would only try to accumulate 'good reasons' for doing an immoral thing if he already knew that thing was wrong."

The word, “excuses” implies that the person himself doesn’t find his reasons fully convincing. But I would say that such a person suspects rather than knows that he or she is choosing wrongly. And probably suspect it pretty dimly. Because if you even came close to really knowing, deep down and clearly, that something was wrong, and why it was wrong, then why would you do it? Why would any of us knowingly do something that shrinks our own souls/damages our inner lives, at the same time that it harms others?

But I’d also want to say: True. This issue isn’t black and white. There is indeed a “suspicion gradation,” by which we do wrong and feel more or less bad about it at the same time. Here would enter things having to do with subconscious awareness, and violating feelings that one hasn’t looked at carefully.

EJ mentions that there are people who habitually fly into rages, and so surely they realize that this is a tendency of theirs. She points out that a criminal who fits this pattern is just as great a danger to society as more calculating or premeditating types, and she questions whether their behavior is any more excusable. (Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood presents an account of one criminal of each type.)

Mbaines cites a Star Trek episode featuring a society that punishes even minor legal infractions with death, which I guess would be the furthest theoretical extension of criminal justice as “punishment,” and brings up the matter of the reality of capital punishment.

G-Fish points to the complexity of the law, and has me thinking about phenomena like plea bargaining, and how white collar criminals who do things like wipe out the life’s savings of numerous retirees, get slaps on the wrist despite how much harm they do. And about the way that justice depends a lot on having enough money for a good lawyer. The complexity of the law here reminds me of the tax code. The loopholes and contradictions exist to serve the interests of the privileged.

G-Fish also raises some large theoretical questions about the criminal mind/human nature. I’ll pick up on the one that reads,

“…the life of a perpetrator involves a detour into a place {concerning which the rest of us are basically} clueless…”

I’ve often had the same reaction – How can anyone do such a thing? At the same time, I’ve heard criminal psychologists repeatedly remark on the mundane, ordinary personalities of most of the criminals they study. Instead of finding monsters, they just find people.

The Practical Matters More

When it comes to the practical rather than the theoretical, I think matters are much clearer. As to sister Lynne’s comment, it’s pretty much a short version of what follows. But since no one’s put the two of us in charge of anything, I’m not putting that much stock in our consensus. Anyway…

Regardless of what goes on in the minds of criminals who do serious or widespread harm, job one – as I think they used to say in the Ford factory commercials back when they were making really bad cars, so please ignore the connotation - is to protect the public by sentences long enough to seriously cut down on repeat performances. To me this is the important point in Life of Bryan’s comment. (But I’m thinking that the tone of LB's comment sounds like he may favor the idea of punishing adults, which I would disagree with per yesterday’s post.)

Job two is to provide a prison environment that isn’t punitive, but basically monastic. A monastery behind bars – that would be my model. Provide opportunities for education and reflection, with an emphasis that includes not only practical knowledge toward the end of gainful employment, but subjects that humanize – religion and spirituality, the arts, literature, psychotherapy. Make it available. Some will take advantage of it and some won’t. Of course for a lot of inmates, basic literacy and a GED would need to come first.

Why that approach? Because it would do more good than harm. I remember hearing about a woman in the news a couple years ago that had spent many years, I think decades, on death row. There was universal agreement that this was a changed person, someone who’d been more than “rehabilitated” – transformed, really. She was duly put to death anyway.

Some say capital punishment is needed to bring “closure” to the living. I tend to be skeptical about the idea that those family members who do find real closure get it through witnessing or knowing about the criminal’s execution. Feeling good about watching someone you hate die is not “closure.” It’s “revenge.” I think the sources of closure are altogether different.

Furthermore, even if genuine psycho-spiritual closure for some people did somehow come about through killing perpetrators rendered harmless by life imprisonment and who, as human beings, carry an unknown potential for personal transformation, I’m sorry – morally, this is more than a tad askew. If I ran the show, “killing for closure” would be against the rules.

“Punishing” Criminals: An Example of Ignorance

2005-05-23T19:11:00.000-04:00

Who is more profoundly ignorant: The juvenile who murders someone in a fit of rage, or the adult who carefully plans out a murder and then executes it?

Yes, this is the provocative question I posed to the wider world at the end of yesterday’s post, and which I now answer for myself. Short of a flood of protests along the lines of, “No! Please keep talking about ignorance v. sin as the cause of wrongdoing!” I will go on tomorrow to a different topic, allowing the philosophical tree to fall silently in the virtual forest.

Anyway: It’s the premeditating murderer who’s more ignorant. A mentally competent person who committs an immoral act has buried his ignorance under ten feet of “good reasons” for his or her action. Which makes it deep doo-doo indeed.

I tend to doubt that anyone has ever consciously and deliberately chosen evil as evil. I doubt that Adolf Hitler, paragon of evil, to my mind, ever saw himself that way. And I’ve never met a “devil worshipper,” but I’ll bet that even here, such a person takes a dim view of what the rest of us call “good” – seeing it, perhaps, as superficial, shallow, insincere, out of touch with “the truth,” or misguided in some way. Even the devil worshipper sees him/herself as somehow being “right” and even “better,” in some twisted sense, than the rest of us.

However: for criminal law to mete out sentences in terms of degree of conscious choice is of great practical value, even if it does endorse an incorrect “deliberate wrongdoing” model. For in general, the more that forethought and intention are present in the criminal’s own deliberative processes, so to speak, the greater the danger that the criminal will committ such a crime again – precisely because that individual is steeped in the ignorant conviction that his or her actions are somehow justified. So longer sentences for premeditators is a good idea.

Where the “sin” model of crime goes wrong is with the notion that prison is for “punishing” prisoners. Since that’s what it’s for, why not have an inhumane system, where, for example, prisoners can easily and regularly assault other prisoners?

Punishment, limited and commensurate with the infraction, may help instill very young children with a conscience. But I’d like to see the study showing that punishing adults does any such thing. It hardens them. It makes them a greater menace us all when they get out. It “teaches” them nothing but greater hatred.

Yet we remain committed as a society to punishing criminals for excellent reasons, like the grand ideal of “justice” – which, of course, in this context, has absolutely nothing to do with, say, vengeance, which would be unworthy of institutionalization in any form by an advanced civilization such as ours.

Sounds ignorant to me…

Wrong Choices as Profoundly Ignorant?

2005-05-22T14:02:00.000-04:00

In the May 20 post, The Nature of Ignorance…” I cited criminal law’s recognition of varying degrees of responsibility for criminal behavior. There are, for example, crimes of passion vs. premeditated ones, and crimes committed by juveniles and the mentally retarded vs. those committed by fully competent adults. I thought people would feel that this suggests that as a society, we view wrongdoing chiefly in terms of choice. The more that choice is involved with committing a crime, the harsher the sentence.

In a comment to this post, Life of Bryan suggests defining ignorance in terms of, "not understanding the ramifications of what our choices really entail, no matter how deliberate they might seem..." (My paraphrase. And I’ve taken his remark out of its complete context, which includes reference to our nature as essentially “fallen” – another direction this conversation could take).

I’m thinking this helps bring things into focus a lot. I could ask the following question to suggest the direction I’m looking in:

Who is more profoundly ignorant: The juvenile who murders someone in a fit of rage, or the adult who carefully plans out a murder and then executes it?

PS Apologies to people who have blogrolled me without my blogrolling them back. One of these weekends, my sister and I will have time to get together so she can show me how to do it. If I then accidentally leave anyone out who wants to be on the roll (role?) after it’s up, just email me or send a comment.

Continuing with Yesterday's Post: Wrongdoing as Ignorance of God?

2005-05-21T12:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday’s post tries to advance the wrongdoing as ignorance vs. wrongdoing as sin discussion by asking what the nature of ignorance might be, and what ramifications criminal law may have for our understanding of wrongdoing.

Life of Bryan has suggested a perspective on ignorance as “ignorance of God’s perfect truth and unerring righteousness.” I think many believers would agree.

What would we then make of moral differences among atheists? Take, for example, one who’s a violent criminal, and another whose conduct is such that anyone would find it commendable: a good family life, contributing member of the community, and so forth.

The Nature of Ignorance and the Law’s View of Wrongdoing

2005-05-20T15:59:00.000-04:00

On the May 18 post, looking more closely at whether wrongdoing is more accurately viewed as ignorance or as consciously choosing evil over good (sin), I asked: If ignorance, ignorance of what?

For those of us inclined to view wrongdoing as “knowing not what they do,” just what sort of thing is it that we are ignorant of when we act badly? Or to use Buddhist terminology, can we say anything about the nature of enlightenment?

A second question I’d like to raise by way of looking more closely at this issue is: what about the recognition, by criminal law, of varying degrees of responsibility for criminal behavior - as in crimes of passion in distinction from premeditated ones, and crimes committed by juveniles and the mentally retarded vs. those committed by fully competent adults?

Does how the law deals with wrongdoing have anything to say about whether it’s best viewed as ignorance or as conscious choice?

Footnote on Suffering

It’s quite easy to get people to pray for you. (And it is appreciated.)
It is much harder to find anyone who will cut your toenails.

Job Jr., after he could no longer reach his toes. From, In My Father's Footsteps.

More Ignorance/Sin Debate, plus: Is Suffering That Good for the Soul?

2005-05-18T20:59:00.000-04:00

I. Ignorance Model: Probably a Poor Choice of Words

Continuing with the theme of wrongdoing as ignorance vs. sin, first let’s recall that we’ve been viewing sin as a matter of knowingly turning away from the good to choose evil. Second, let me point out that we haven’t really defined “ignorance” yet. Ignorance of what?

Third, as long as consensus seems to be starting to develop around the ignorance model (“ignorance model…” Ha! Sounds like a dumb concept right there… excuse me)… To continue, without interrupting myself: As long as consensus was developing around ignorance, I’m going to pull a couple things out of context from recent comments that I think tend to support wrongdoing as sin. For the commentators’ own positions, please see their comments.

Following these two comments, I’ve posted my own, “No – I still think it’s probably ignorance,” reply.

Mbaines points to the irresponsibility involved in someone not taking medication that he or she knows helps to keep them mentally stable. He points to an example in the news where such an individual, off their meds, committed a crime. MB characterizes this individual, who was shooting at traffic, as guilty and deserving to lose his freedom.

Reply: I’m thinking that there’s nothing logically inconsistent about dealing with antisocial behavior in a manner that protects the public while viewing wrongdoing as ignorance. Protecting the public is a practical necessity. Whether we view those who do wrong as ignorant or sinful is more or less beside that point. But I do think our view of this matter has a lot to do with how we treat them after we put them in prison.

As MB points out with respect to the individual in his example, this person very likely knew that by not taking the medication, he was placing himself and possibly others at risk. I would want to say that in the individual’s own mind, he must have had his reasons for not taking the meds. My feeling is that these reasons, whatever their specifics, could probably be described as faulty or ignorant.

Anonymous 1: “Not to confuse matters more, but I sometimes wonder if {there could be} acts of willful ignorance? If a person knows something is wrong and does it anyway, does that person really know what the consequences will be and just not care?”

Reply: In cases of willful ignorance, individuals may have only a superficial or limited understanding that their actions are wrong. For example, it might amount to little more than knowing that others think their actions are wrong.

II. Suffering: How Good Is It?

Anonymous II points out that suffering with no purpose or meaning to it is particularly hard to take. I couldn’t agree more. Where suffering does have meaning, much or all of the spiritual sting is removed.

A-II goes on to say that suffering that may initially appear meaningless can itself produce spiritual growth, allowing us to uncover dimensions of meaning of which we would otherwise have remained unaware, which is certainly true. I’d add that we usually arrive at the meanings once the suffering is over with.

Reply: I don’t know as A-II is wanting to take it this far, but I would reject the idea that suffering necessarily results in a net gain in our experience of meaning, if only we come to look at it rightly. For example, I doubt that the sun ever sets without seeing some number of people in this world slowly tortured to death. They don’t have time or space to arrive at meaning. And there is pain that doesn’t end until death. For some people, it’s too much. They lose psychological and spiritual integrity rather than enter into greater integrity. There are losses that take away more than they give.

Life can dole out more suffering than anybody needs. It can even give us more than we can take. And when this happens, it’s usually a matter of human beings, at the very least, participating in the way that acts of God or nature can give other human beings more than they can handle - actively, or by failing to bring some measure of relief that we could provide.

We are endowed with the collective capacity to radically reduce life’s meaninglessness. It is the greatest gift. It’s the big one propped up against the wall, still unopened, as we crawl around the floor opening the rest of the presents to discover they’re mostly cheap toys.

Day Break

2005-05-14T15:33:00.000-04:00

Friday night through Saturday seem to be off-peak blogging times, so this is a one day break to see if there will be any comments to yesterday's post. Please see it if you haven't looked...

Whirlblog

2005-05-12T16:31:00.000-04:00

With regard to the comments on yesterday’s post: Dizzying! Talk about a variety of points, and points of view. And not one of you guys addressed the thing that I was trying to talk about! But surprises are okay...

First, I’m sure Hesthefastest didn’t mean that he actually thinks there are no divisions on earth except between God and humanity. He was just stressing his belief that this is by far the most significant one. (Naturally, please correct me, anyone and everyone, if I misrepresent you when I summarize…)

“There is a huge difference between our beliefs. By all accounts, I should be dead set against you, and if i were living for myself i would be. Why would i care that you don't share my beliefs? But because of my relationship with Jesus, i wish to show understanding and love.” –Hesthefastest

This paragraph brings to mind one of the additional divisions here on earth: the distinction between God and what we believe about God. Of course the word “God” itself represents a belief for most people who use the word, and not everyone shares that belief – but that’s another topic. Here, I’d just like to say that to the extent that our beliefs about God set us against those with differing beliefs, this isn’t such a good thing. HTF definitely recognizes this, and depends on his relationship with Jesus to help him out on this.

HTF, did you happen to catch the “bracketing” segment of the May 5 post? Do you think that makes sense? I see it as a useful tool for helping to defeat exactly that tendency which religious beliefs can have to set us against those with differing views.

Matthew brings up the interfaith movement (thanks for the link in your comment to Philocrites – looks like an interesting site). Matthew sees interfaith discussion as “a more realistic path to peace than trying to convert everyone to your… religion.”

I’m pretty sure the world’s religious traditions are too deeply rooted for anything close to universal conversion to any one of them between, say, now and the Apocalypse. In today’s context of the globalization of travel and communications, surely interfaith dialogue is essential if religion is ever to clearly represent more of a source of harmony than conflict.

MBaines’ remarks indicate his view that truth, and even Truth with a capital T - and even (though he doesn’t personally believe so) our approach to God -- will only come about through dialogue and a developing consensus.

So is it possible that nobody’s got it all worked out just right yet – our ways of looking at the Bible, our views of reality, our understanding of the universe, God, humankind, nature? I think scripture quoting is often way overdone. It can start to look like cutting up the verses to use for cards in a game of Theological Monopoly. But this one’s irresistible in the context of this post:

At the climactic point in the Book of Job, God says to Job from out of the whirlwind:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?”

The background here is that Job has been complaining to God that he should not have to suffer so terribly when he has been a good and faithful man. It makes no sense to him. So God’s essential reply is:

What do you know?

Pay me rent if you land on the Job square.

PS Life of Bryan commented too late to be summarized above, but he’s focusing squarely on the sword metaphor, offering one example of it as representing external divisions, and another where it stands for internal conflict. It’s that second type that I want to talk about…

Corporate Sponsored Religiosity

2005-05-10T13:37:00.000-04:00

What follows is a comment I made today to the Rockridge Forum conference, http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=dialogue05/day2/commonground#comment-1292, re. the Buckley v. Valeo 1976 Supreme Court decision. I think it's worth posting. Every election cycle, politicians with a vested interest in our badly broken campaign financing system do little songs and dances around the issue of campaign finance reform without mentioning the fundamental problem:

I'll refrain from commenting on my perception of the current administration's relative degree of authentic spirituality and faith, vs. their deliberate use of religious rhetoric to win the religious right's vote and allow them to pursue their pro corporate agenda. I can't read minds. There's probably a degree of both. To some degree they probably really do think they're doing God's work; yet certainly there's nothing subtle about their calculated reiterations of pious sounding phrases.

I would, however, like to call attention to something as close to the root cause of the increasing control of government by corporate America as I’ve been able to find: the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision, which equates unlimited spending on behalf of political candidates with “free speech”. Money has been talking with a megaphone ever since. It’s why, for example, we have a health insurance industry that excludes millions, and overrules the decisions of patients’ doctors every day.

The National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, MA www.nvri.org is at the forefront of trying to remedy Buckley v. Valeo, as well as other issues social and political injustice.

Absolutist Statement and Reply

2005-05-08T16:28:00.000-04:00

Hesthefastest (“HTP”) has posted a comment to the absolute/relative theme launched with May 3rd’s post, “The Best, Jesus – the Best!” I post it below in full because it can point us in either of two directions, which I mention at the end of his comment.

HTP:

I wish i could have commented sooner.

God is absolute.
He cannot be relative, if He were, then he would not be God.
He is the source of everything, not the other way around.

Following that, there must be some absolute truths concerning God. The question is: how do we know these truths?
If the only way is through reasoning and logic, then we are in a sad condition indeed. The only true way is to learn Truth from God, revelation. So, it matters not what we say about God, but what God says about himself. This is where the Bible comes in. Surely, if one deviates from the direct revelation of the Bible, they can no longer claim to rely on revelation from God. So, it comes down to how one is to interpret revelation from God.

I am a Pentecostal. Very far from what most people would consider classical Christianity. But at the root of the Pentecostal movement is a desire to abandon tradition based religion and use revelation (ie: scripture) based religion. The Church had so clouded the issues that they had strayed from the revealed Truth of God.

The way religion evolves is in its greater understanding of revelation, not in adding to it. It liken it to writing out pi, the more you write, the closer you are, but are only writing one number.

Most people assume that Jesus taught peace and acceptance, but Jesus taught that there would be those that would be accepted through His blood, and those that would not.
"Do not think i have come to bring peace to the world. No, i did not come to bring peace, but a sword"
Matthew 10:34
Love is often confused for something else. First off the only true love is the love from God, a perfect love. This love is modeled by a parents love for a child. Even if you love a child, would you let him do bad things? No matter how much you love you son, would you force yourself upon him if he always rejected you? If he hated you and wanted nothing to do with you, surely you would do everything in your power to regain that relationship, but you would not tie him down and force him to be with you. Such is the love of God. He will not force Himself on those that hate Him.
I find it wrong how some people want religion to be universally accepting. All religions are not. Getting back to the definition of the word religion, why would there be a need to REjoin if everyone is already joined. If you want universal acceptance, you want something else. Even seemingly universally accepting worldviews do not accept those that do not accept everybody.
As for evangelism, if someone is truly convinced of something, he will act upon it. The worldview of some Christians is that of the world standing over the edge of a deadly fire pit, completely unaware of the danger. Surely it would be wise to warn the world and not let them make their own decision without any influence.

FIRST, as far as the central absolute/relative issue goes, I’d stand by my May 5 post: “Relatively Sure of Our Absolutes.” HTP states his belief in God, his belief that God is absolute, and his belief that the Bible is the definitive revelation of God. He believes these things passionately, but they were not revealed to him. His remark, “The way religion evolves is in its greater understanding of revelation, not in adding to it,” at once restates his belief in the Bible as revelation, and asserts his belief that no further revelations are being made to any of us.

There’s a lot to his post, and more that could be commented on. To pick up on just a couple more items:

I do think we need to be careful about the verse concerning Jesus bringing not peace, but a sword. A number of interpretations are possible, and some of these I think would be off-base. For example, I don’t think Jesus would have condoned the Inquisition or the Crusades, or Muslim/Christian/Jewish violence in today’s world.

“Agape” is the Christian term for universal love. This is off the top of my head. Maybe someone like Matthew knows its origins? In any case, I’m struck by HTP’s desire to warn the rest of us as based on what he believes. Sounds loving to me!

SECOND, I admire HTP for posting to a progressive blog and offering a conservative perspective without being shrill, condescending, or combative. It makes me want to do a post or two on the topic of communications to look more at just how people of differing views can speak to each other without recrimination.

PS On a totally different topic, Matthew's post, Thief or Oppressor? is awesome: http://liberaljesus.blogspot.com/

Relatively Brief

2005-05-06T20:33:00.000-04:00

Thanks for all your comments in recent days. You all have different and interesting angles on this. Here are a couple ideas that emerged for me that might make for an endnote:

In yesterday’s post, which concerned the absolute truth claims of different religions, I was picking up on a point that I think was made by Phil, or maybe more than one of you: that many religious people do sincerely believe their religion is, to put it simply, the right one, the best one, the truest one. And many of these people would view any blurring of the edges of their tradition with other traditions as being untrue to their faith, or at least watering it down. It was in this context that my post suggested that those with absolutist positions can still “bracket” their own faith perspective for the sake of meaningful dialogue.

That said, there are those who feel that blurring the edges or even doing some synthesizing in an effort to reconcile our religious differences may represent movement toward updating our traditions. I’m guessing, for example, that Tarquin would place himself in that category. That’s also where I’d fit in. Doing this does introduce the possibility of missteps. It can be hard to tell whether today’s “fresh approach” represents a furthering of our tradition or a deviation away from it, until tomorrow – which often means, until after we’re gone, and the next generations decide.

But as noted yesterday, traditions do change over time, whether at a “conservative” or “progressive” pace. The increasing recognition of women as rightfully having an equal place in religious life is so far advanced that I think it provides a good example of an aspect of tradition that’s in process of change right now.

Tomorrow I’m going to post something “cheap and easy,” then look at a new topic on Sunday.

BTW: I want to call attention to a link to an online conference that’s about to start. It was provided in a comment by blogger Matt Florence, http://www.stilleggplant.com/, and is called, Spiritual Progressives: A dialogue on values and building a movement: http://forum.rockridgeinstitute.org/?q=dialogue05. Anyone can participate, and among the hosts are some well know figures, e.g., Marcus Borg and Jim Wallis.

Relatively Sure of Our Absolutes

2005-05-05T18:19:00.000-04:00

Setting the Chairs and Tables Back Up: Considering that, “The Best,” which I posted May 3, received a lot of comments, let’s continue with that theme. But first: at one point in the comments, a fight broke out. Anonymous swung at me. He missed, but smote somebody else standing behind me on the right cheek, and there ensued a brief brouhaha with virtual fisticuffs. Although passion is a good thing, and it’s appreciated, Jesus did say to turn the other cheek, not, “guess whether I’m flipping one bird or two.” That interpretation was strongly rejected in one of the earlier church councils.

What follows tries to get at what appear to me as the central issues that were raised in comments to the previous two posts.

Absolute and Relative

I think the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word “relativist” in connection with religion and spirituality, is “moral relativist.” This term always conjures up the image of somebody going, “Hey, dude, like, do your own thing! It’s ALL okay!!!”

I think this is an exaggeration of the position.

First, it seems to me that where morality is concerned, everybody’s a moral relativist. We can’t operate in the real world just by referring to a list of absolute moral principles. Once, when I was teaching English as a Second Language, a Cambodian student described to me how he’d risked his life stealing rice in a Khmer Rouge slave labor camp to help keep his family alive. I didn’t find fault.

If he’d come back the next day with a new notebook that he’d stolen from the local drugstore, I would have wanted him to return it.

“Thou shalt not steal,” is a great commandment. In most circumstances, it certainly applies. But every now and then we have to say: that depends…

However, when we move from morality to religion, especially in the west, we really are talking absolute truth claims. Muslims, for example, view the Koran as the final and infallible revelation of God’s will. Christians believe that Jesus’ resurrection was God’s final revelation to this world, and brought salvation for our sins.

These are clearly two different perspectives on the state of God’s relations with us.

And yet each is a faith perspective. We have faith, not knowledge. If we all really thought we knew, I think there’d be a lot less argument. We’d mostly be sitting around looking at each other and feeling pretty unthreatened and self-content. To the degree that we are bothered when others don’t share our convictions, I’d suggest it might signal that we are disturbed by our own doubts.

But the only problematic part is being so disturbed. The dynamic between faith and doubt is an aspect of Christianity (Islam? Judaism?) that is widely acknowledged, and a common theme among Christian theologians.

So people whose religions make absolute truth claims aren’t absolutely certain of them. This not only isn’t a problem: it holds out potential for allowing each other some breathing space.

Bracketing

It isn’t that we relativize. We continue to believe what we believe. We only “bracket” or set aside our beliefs at times when we dialogue about religious matters with others. In concrete terms, “bracketing” just means that every other sentence coming out of our mouths doesn’t have to be a matter of repeating the things we believe.

Acknowledging the fact of human doubt is something that allows us to honestly and sincerely respect others’ beliefs in the absolutist claims of their religions, while maintaining our own beliefs. It allows us to respect those who do not view the essence of their spiritual lives/humanity as adhering to a system of beliefs about God at all. In sum, it allows for the possibility of learning from others and growing in our own faith.

To acknowledge the element of doubt in faith, is no more contrary to faith than acknowledging that everybody here is from planet earth.

Remember too, that no tradition has ever existed as a stagnant perfection. There is no such thing as stagnant perfection. A tradition conserves some things, but moves forward in other areas. Otherwise it ends up getting discussed only in history and literature classes, like the Greek and Roman gods.

If “bracketed” – or maybe just, “mutually respectful” - ways of speaking to each other were to become the norm, the little breathing space we give each other might eventually give way to greater common light. Example: What if beliefs are not the only absolutes?

One-two-three-testing…

2005-05-04T14:11:00.000-04:00

“Life of Bryan” offered a long and thoughtful comment on yesterday’s post. Potentially there’s a lot there to respond to.

I responded briefly per below. Thought I’d just post my reply here, suggestively, (well, not that way; I’m really not so alluring), to see if it evokes further interest. If so, we can look more at the topic of absolutist v. relativistic perspectives. If not, I may take an easier direction until I have time to give this complex issue more thought.

Otherwise I’ll just plunge in. And probably need some guidance. I may have gone to a good divinity school, but even though my brain thinks pretty well in maybe what you could call dynamic terms – give me some facts, and I can think about them okay - I’m not much of a fact-retainer. Most of my education was fully metabolized long ago into such useful thoughts as, “I really liked that class,” and “That was weird to have a professor teaching Shakespeare who actually looked Elizabethan.”

Anyway, here’s what I said:

I think you've put your finger on what has been a central problem for religion in the modern world. Adherents to the great world religions have become aware of each other's competing absolutist claims.

Further discussion of this really deserves more space. Don't know as I'll be able to get into it in today's post. As you suggest, it could get complicated!

Let me just toss this out for now.

“Love and do what you will.” St. Augustine

“So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
I Cors 13

Are these perspectives absolutist or relativistic?

Historical Clarifications, and Questions of Divisiveness vs. Common Ground

2005-05-01T13:52:00.000-04:00

I think that Joe’s thoughtful comment to yesterday’s post, “Informing Faith,” deserves a whole post in reply, so I’ve cut and pasted his comment here, then responded below.

Joe comments:

Interesting exchange there. Thanks for the invite. I would disagree with much of what you have written here, and would say that your studies too are coming from a particular school of thought, not embraced by all critical scholarship. I would only summarize my thoughts by saying 1) NT scholarship is not agreed that the epistles are pseudepigraphical, 2) your understanding of the origins of Christianity comes from one perspective itself that many historians have trouble with, and 3) although different terminology has been used throughout the centuries, Christians have always maintained that the Scripture is God's word to man.

Like you I have pursued an education dealing with these issues. Both undergraduate and graduate school in biblical and theological studies. I only mention this to say I have found that scholarship is divided over many of the issues you present here. Blog on man.

Joe Thorn

Thanks Joe. I appreciate your help on the historical aspects. It also gives me a chance to clarify.

It’s possible that some school of thought challenges Paul’s authorship of the epistles, but I’m not aware of any. As far as I know, it’s accepted that he did write them. I think its pretty much universally recognized that St. Paul was running around all over the Mediterranean world spreading the Word and writing his letters. In historical terms, it’s hard to see how Christianity would ever have grown from a small Jewish sect into a world religion without his work.

But Paul never met the historical Jesus; his ministry took place half a century later. So I’m quite certain that biblical scholarship finds that generally speaking, the NT, including the gospels, was written by members of the early church who did not personally know Jesus during his lifetime. And I believe it’s known for a fact that the NT came into being through a process in which oral traditions that first circulated about Jesus for decades after his death, were finally put into writing.

However: the RSV is a much better source than my recollections. It deals with this subject book by book, and in a nuanced way – for example, it brings it up if there is some thought that an apostle or contemporary might have actually written a particular book. To me it’s not the most beautiful Bible to read, but it’s widely regarded as the most accurate translation, and top notch when it comes to the scholarship. (It’s the one they used at U. of Chicago while I was there, which is a leading divinity school. My guess is that it’s also used by other divinity schools that are especially strong on biblical scholarship.)

As far as scripture as God’s word goes, I think it’s important to note that the Judeo-Christian tradition sees God as working through human history. Knowing as much as we can about that history, to me, only adds to the significance of Christian faith. I should mention that practically all faculty I had for classes at UC were not only scholars, but Christian ministers from various denominations.

But to use the theological phrase, it “bugs the heck out of me” that religion’s presence in the world is often a source of conflict and misery. I’m all in favor of the ecumenical movement within Christianity, but would also like to see Christians start connecting more effectively with non-Christians.

So I’m always interested if now or down the road you or any of your readers have thoughts concerning these matters:

Are there aspects of Christian faith that have potential to connect with people who come from other faith (and even non faith) perspectives?

Is it helpful or accurate to present Christianity as “the best” faith (per yesterday’s post)?

I recently came across Rev. Butter's blog, http://tcpc.blogs.com/revbutter/, and find that I like his approach. While his discussion is clearly from a Christian perspective, he devotes much space to reflecting upon significant experiences that I think it’s fair to say we share simply as human beings.

My Interview with Conservatives Weakly

2005-04-29T13:02:00.000-04:00

After my recent interview with Famous Bloggers Magazine, I realized I must be famous enough to “diablog” with religious conservatives anytime, even if I’ve only gotten like two conservative comments to this blog so far. All I needed was to dial up Conservatives Weakly and arranged for an interview with their Editor-in-Chief.

CW: We’re not so sure that we appreciate the general tone of your blog.

PM: Could you be more specific?

CW: Well, here at CW, we consider ourselves religious. We’re not particularly enamored of the term, “spirituality.”

PM: What about the Holy Spirit?

CW: We do make that exception.

PM: That’s all I’m really talking about.

CW: Frankly, it seems to us that you’re just making stuff up as you go
along.

PM: Didn’t the authors of the Bible do that?

CW: (seeing without believing): Have you never heard of, divine
inspiration?

PM: You mean they wrote all those pages and never had to go back and erase?

All in good fun. Genuine conservatives, like everyone else, are always welcome.

A Kinder Kind of Slaughter Kind Of

2005-04-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

Okay, you asked for it: animals. I did get one comment to my two-posts-in-one that I could have run with, but in the interests of full disclosure, it was from my sister. It was pretty good, but still… I can always talk to her on the phone...

So: I’m doing something on animals because one of you suggested doing a post related to an article about Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who I’ve happened to hear interviewed on NPR. He provided this email link to a brief summary of her work, which probably does you no good at all because I don’t know how to put links in blogs? Just for fun and in case it works, which I doubt, try clicking on: “share it with you.” (Please keep reading. My other paragraphs get better.)

The full article has a lot of information about human/animal modes of thinking and perception. For present purposes, I’ll just pick up on the fact that Grandin’s work centers on more humane treatment of livestock as they’re processed for slaughter. She helps design environments that take away a lot of the fear and panic for the animals.

This does beg certain questions. Examples: “How humane is it to place animals in ‘slaughter houses’? Might they fare better in other contexts?”

This isn’t to trivialize how wonderful I think Grandin’s work really is. I think it’s the best that can be done at present. Becoming a proponent of universal vegetarianism on moral grounds isn’t my mission in life. It’s far too ahead of our time. We’re not treating our own species humanely.

But it’s worth mentioning that there are plenty of people out there who, if they had to slaughter the cow, wouldn’t be eating the beef. It’s worth mentioning that creating horrible quality of life/quality of slaughter, so to speak, for millions and millions of animals when we don’t need to eat meat for food anymore, isn’t what I’d call much of a spiritual practice.

Of course biblical sources can always be cited – we’ve been given domain over the beasts of the land and the birds of the air etc.

But maybe we should start looking less for sources in scripture, and more for the sources of scripture in ourselves.

My Interview in Famous Bloggers Magazine

2005-04-27T15:59:00.000-04:00

Did you know that for every comment received by a blog, 12 people are reading without commenting? Something like that must be true, so I have supported this statement with made-up numbers to turn it into hard fact.

Meanwhile, I’m going to wait a day for comments to yesterday’s “two posts in one.” If there are no takers, I may break into a totally new topic. It may be “animals,” since I’ve received a push in that direction.

As collective punishment to my hypothesized readership for not enough comments yesterday, I leave this for you to endure:

An interview with Paul Martin, from this month’s, Famous Bloggers Magazine:

Bill Glob, Editor-In-Chief: Welcome, Paul Martin. Tell us – how did you
become a famous blogger?

PM: I don’t think I am one.

BG: Ha! What makes you say that?

PM: Not enough traffic?

BG: Love it! Love it!

PM: Huh?

BG: Why do you suppose you don’t get more comments from Canadians?

PM: Four out of twelve of my readers are Canadian.

BG: Eh now – things are looking up then…

PM: Right.

BG: But on a personal note: Did you want to be the prime minister of
Canada when you were growing up?

PM: No.

Two In One Post: Politics-Faith; Miracles-Scripture

2005-04-26T17:26:00.000-04:00

I’ve had some interesting comments to multiple posts recently. So let’s see if I can be succinct enough to do a two-in-one posting.

A Paradigm for Religion In - and Out - of Politics

Regarding G-Fish’s comment to 4/24 post:

Basically, you’re against mixing religion and politics, and see it as producing a particularly bitter and polarizing discourse, if you can even call it that. And basically I agree, but would add:

I can understand progressive concern that in the public mind, or at least the media, “moral issues” seem to have been defined in conservative terms. Pointing out that they can be defined otherwise makes some sense to me.

What I object to, and I think this may be central to your own view, is using faith and scripture to buttress every jot and tittle, so to speak, of our political agendas. If recent trends continue, local politicians will soon be quoting scripture for or against putting speed bumps on your street, or in relation to purchasing additional road salt for next winter.

What about this for a paradigm: politics involves a lot of gray areas over which people of good will may reasonably differ. Here, religious language should KEEP OUT. It just entrenches everybody’s egos in feelings of Sublime Righteousness and produces Holier Than Thou competitions, which don’t elevate anyone’s spirit, let alone mood.

But once in a while, the area isn’t gray. Here, real statesmanship, as informed by passionate religious or spiritual conviction, can change the world. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Nelson Mandela. It doesn’t come across as preachy, because the broader public, whatever our beliefs, recognizes that something real is at stake. Something which is truly a matter of right and wrong.

Shifting gears…

Possible Implications of Shane’s “Lit-Crit” – (or at least of my take on his comment) – for understanding A) Miracles and B) Scripture

Here’s a line from Shane’s “lit-crit” comment to 4/23’s post on miracles (“Ice Cube Golf Balls…”). Readers may want to take a look at his comment in full.

“Miracles are considered miracles because the community of faith over time has said they were. That is simply the only reason that we consider them to be so.”

Shane goes on to answer my question as to whether there was a special holy age that ended 2000 years ago during which God spoke more directly to us than he has since. Included in that era would have been the performance of the great biblical miracles – most notably, as Shane points out, the resurrection.

Shane says the reason that God has seemed silent since that time frame is because religions have closed their canons, i.e., are no longer adding to scripture. (What we regard today as scripture was solidified many hundreds of years ago by early church councils.)

So:

The reason God seems a lot quieter lately is that we decided to close the book on God.

And what makes a miracle a real miracle is the fact that the faith community decided that it was, back when the scriptural cannon was being formulated.

Bear in mind that the New Testament itself is based on oral traditions about Jesus that circulated for decades after his death before being put into writing. The authors of what we know as scripture were people who never met the flesh and blood Jesus. The account of Jesus’ resurrection is itself a product of the early Christian faith community.

What are the implications? Do they energize you, disturb you, or fail to make much of a difference to you?

Diabloging Gaycism

2005-04-25T16:32:00.000-04:00

I really appreciate the following comment from “Life of Bryan” to my 4/21 post concerning what I termed Gaycism. Readers might want to just click on his comment. I copied it below, but the lines came out hard to read.

Bryan's comment represents a more conservative viewpoint on this topic than I’ve yet received, and yet it truly engages with my point of view instead of attacking it. I’ve tried to respond in the same spirit. I think this is what real diablog, or dialogue, is all about.

Tomorrow I’ll divert back to G-Fish’s comment on yesterday’s post to pick up again with the idea of religion in politics.

Homosexuality and Morality: The Point of View that Bryan Presents

Yeah, but playing devil's advocate.... couldn’t one say that there is a
basis in scripture to equate child molestation with a gay lifestyle (loose
interpretation of "sexual immorality" scriptures, assuming they're all in the
same category for the purposes of my argument...stay with me here). So then we
could argue that, over time, our culture has been
desensitized/trained/influenced into believing that the gay lifestyle is
acceptable, vs. the other activities in that original immoral category that we
were never encouraged overlook. Who knows, there might be a culture on earth
where the kiddie stuff is acceptable. You make the call.

I think this illustrates a point of human condition as it relates to
religion throughout history (regardless of your stance on this particular
issue...so step back for a minute), so what I'm saying is...people have always
rationalized certain behaviors that aren't endorsed/allowed in scripture, or
otherwise selectively picked apart certain components of the Bible to justify a
certain choice and/or lifestyle. I say it's a human condition flaw because, in
my primitive thinking, it seems that when two beings diverge in opinion (one
heavenly being and the other earthly), then us earthly folks often choose to
"spin" or interpret the higher opinion until we have rationalized a passive
endorsement of our own beliefs...thus status quo is maintained.

I think people generally overreact to the gay thing due to a variety of
reasons, but the black & white idealist in me says "If a certain act is
discouraged in the scriptures, you might want to stay away from it buddy. It
doesn't mean that God hates you, or that Christians have license to persecute
you. So hey, get with the program."

My Response to Bryan

(Bryan, please note: I tried to click on your “theshute” blog to learn more about where you might be coming from – because of your “devil’s advocate” sentence – but I got a “Not Found” message from Blogger.)

The topic of homosexuality, like so many topics, can and is argued both ways from scripture. Liberals and conservatives both cite their favorite passages. So I toss this out only half in jest: Maybe God made scripture cut both ways on so many issues in order to assure that we make use our God-given minds and free wills to think and choose.

I am certain that child molestation harms children. Twenty-three years as a school counselor convinces me. I won’t digress here, but I can follow up on this if anyone wants to.

To date, I’ve come across nothing but unsupported allegations that homosexual relations between adults, per se, do anyone any harm. Of course, homosexual relations, like heterosexual relations, can cause harm. Take, for example, sexual coercion, infidelity in a committed relationship, or sexual compulsion.

Could sexual relations involving what we call minors be acceptable in another culture? Yes. When the average lifespan, 60,000 years ago, was age fifteen, it was vital to the perpetuation of the species. (I make up numbers when I’m too lazy to google, but my general point is on-target…) So you could say that if God hadn’t already approved of this, we wouldn’t be here to second guess God. I would also venture that in cultures that lived close to nature, sexual development, rather than date of birth, would be the indicator of when a person was ready for sex. So if a mature thirteen-year old and a twenty year old got together, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to anyone in such a culture that there was a problem. The social realities that would make it a problem in our culture today did not exist at that time and place.

I agree with your general caution against taking the easy way out on moral perspectives. For me, this wasn’t an easy way out.

In my twenties I was on right about the same wavelength as your devil’s advocate position. I had a gut feeling that homosexuality was somehow wrong. Likewise, I had no hatred for homosexuals, and was totally against seeing them as targets for wrath, human or divine.

But today I have confidence that my gut feeling was wrong. And that gut feeling no longer exists. To borrow but invert your language, I think my former gut feeling was a product of how, over time, our culture has been desensitized/trained/influenced into believing that homosexuality is unacceptable.

Finally, I notice that you use the phrase, "the gay lifestyle." What is the difference between a gay lifestyle and a straight lifestyle, aside from the obvious one?

Sometimes My God Says Dammit

2005-04-24T19:10:00.000-04:00

Recently on Dale’s blog at The Village Gate, http://www.therightchristians.org, Dale posted an article titled, “God’s Politics,” which is also the title of a book by author Jim Wallis, whose remarks Dale was summarizing. Wallis seemed to be expressing the view that “moral” issues shouldn’t be equated with the far right’s political agenda.

But what really caught my attention was Dale’s paraphrase of Wallis saying something along the lines of, “agnostics and secular humanists have as much right to engage in this moral conversation as any religious person.”

Recent posts on this blog have focused on miracles, and, earlier, on Luther’s concept of “justification by faith.” I’ll make a brief confession.

I am not concerned about miracles. I am not concerned over whether I am justified or saved.

I care about the planet, dammit. Yes, my God says “Dammit” sometimes.

Because it’s a struggle. The civil rights movement of the 60s was the single most inspirational human event that I have witnessed in my time and nation. I was a grade school kid. And I thought the “Age of Aquarius” was only the beginning. I thought it was going to turn into something bigger than All About Money.

One time in my office a few years ago, and one of my last as a school counselor, a fifth grade African American boy came in talking about Martin Luther King Jr., whom his class was studying. I mentioned that Dr. King was my childhood hero.

The boy’s eyes widened: “But you’re white…”

“Yeah,” I said.

That wall has still not been ground into the dust, where it deserves to lie forever.

Do you believe in miracles? Do you have a heterosexual orientation? Are you a member of my church or my religion? Do you believe in God?

All I see in these questions are walls that must come down to give way to a broader and unifying question: Do you care about the general good, the wider world, the children of people you will never live to meet? Have you begun to be concerned with the future of us all, and not just those with whom you happen to ego-identify? Are you aware that you’re going to die, one way or another, and that something greater than yourself is trying to happen here?

Tear down these walls, and the sky's the ceiling of our meeting place. Tear down these walls to find a new moral majority.

Ice Cube Golf Balls v. Major Miracles

2005-04-23T13:06:00.000-04:00

In response to recent comments by G-Fish, M Baines, and Matthew on the “Do You Believe in Miracles” post:

I actually had never heard of the, uh, anatomical possibility MB points to in the natural virgin birth. Speaking personally, I’m not wedded to the idea of Mary’s virginity, but this does start pointing toward the topic of religious miracles per the last four paragraphs below.

G-Fish: Please don’t even think about repenting for your writing style. As far as content goes, sounds like you and MB favor naturalistic interpretations of miracles.

I agree with G-Fish’s main point about how the products of today’s technology, whose manufacturing processes we understand, would appear miraculous from a 14th century perspective. But just to be picky, if, as G-Fish was positing, an IPOD player actually did turn up in the 14th century, it would be a miracle, since it would be an historical anachronism. Or, as we’ve noted, the alternative interpretation would be that it was an extremely rare natural event – some kind of marginal intersection of parallel universes, a weird minor warp in space time etc. (“Etc.” here indicates further such examples where I really have no idea what I’m talking about.)

Matthew: As far as your theoretical idea goes about comparing the odds of an extremely unusual event caused by a supernatural being vs. the odds of stumbling upon a new law of nature, I really appreciate that remark, and plan to show it to my sister. She is convinced that I abuse the concept of probability and calls me “Mr. Law- zhjeek” – logic, only pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, in her idea of a French accent. Now I can prove to her that at least I’m not the only person who thinks this way.

Otherwise, what most drew my attention in Matthew’s comments is how he brings up the subject of the religious significance that many and I think most believers see in the miracles related in the Bible. Matthew points out that my ice cubes to golf balls thing is not currently a topic of discussion except on this blog: “…you’ve never EVER heard of the ice cube golf ball.” I believe he is suggesting that even if it happened, it might not make a big impact on the religious world. Microsoft Word has been trying to tell me the same thing. It kept changing my “golfballs” to “goofballs” on spell check.

Matthew contrasts ice cube golf balls with “biblical miracles that happened dozens of times over thousands of years,” as related in the Old and New Testaments. If you add the Koran, as Muslims would – they view Islam as building on the Bible, just as Christians see the NT as adding to the corpus of the OT – this would extend the time frame by another 500 years.

This leads directly to the subject matter I posted April 2 in, “Judgment Day and The Long Delay.” I think this was before Matthew or MB found this blog.

It asks: Was there a kind of holy era, ending 2000 or 1500 years ago, according to Judeo-Christian/Muslim reckoning, during which time God communicated more directly to us than he has since? The age of significant miracles would have been part of this.

In a Word, Gaycism

2005-04-21T18:02:00.000-04:00

Posting 4.18.05 to the blog, The Polished Mirror, http://polishedmirror.org/, Jess Austin Michalik finds a basis in scripture for support of gay couples. My 4.20 comment was as follows. (For a closer look at my position on this issue see my 3.20 post.)

No time to look up the verses, but the New Testament also says something - and I think it's Jesus talking - about his coming not to destroy the law but to exceed its requirements.

Yet some make the New Testament into a legalistic document, picking verses out of their larger context like they were statutes and not part of a larger message.

Love one another. Love is the greatest gift, greater even than faith, according to St. Paul. How reconcile the New Testament's overall emphasis on generosity of spirit, including love, mercy, and not passing ultimate judgments on others, with excluding homosexuals from full equal rights on earth and a place at the table in heaven?

I don't know it for a fact, but I would just bet, that the Bible contains a verse or two that could be used to support denying equal rights to blacks. And if such verses exist, I am sure that they were used, even by clergy, to try and deny African Americans civil rights and full recognition as equals.

Racism was dead wrong. So is gaycism.

It’s Like Happening, Man…

2005-04-20T12:42:00.000-04:00

Here’s some desultory remarks to keep the blog treading water to wait and see what, if any, direction that any incoming comments seem to want to take; and hopefully give me more time to visit other blogs, and/or try out my new pain medication. If it’s like usual, it will make me loopy, provide a couple of other undesirable side effects, and do nothing for the pain. Readers may be able to tell from the quality of upcoming posts whether I’m procrastinating or taking my meds... I hate fooling around with the stuff, but my situation has gotten pretty extreme.

First, thanks to Matthew at Liberal Jesus http://liberaljesus.blogspot.com/2005/04/gawd-bless-usa.html for picking up on my April 16 post on Faith and Politics and raising some interesting questions on his blog. He did a nice neat simple link to my blog. Sorry for the lengthy URL to yours, Matt. I don’t have the technological chops to do better. (I bet your sister didn’t have to set up your blog for you…)

Second, since my posts of yesterday and the day before were both about children, and I just sent my URL to some of my ex and best teacher colleagues, I want to see if there’s any input from that quarter.

M. Baines’ comment to yesterday’s Margaret post, with his reference to a naturalistic interpretation of spiritual experiences, reminds me of something I never really understood anymore after I thought about it: miracles.

I don’t see how everything isn’t miraculous. I mean, speaking personally, I sure can’t account for what we’re all doing here. I don't find that saying “God did it” helps me out. To me, it only begs the question: What are we even doing here saying, “God did it?” How is it that we have minds to think, “God did it,” or, much less consequentially, “Now what did I do with that spaghetti colander?” Or, to focus in on God: How is it that God made the world the way that it is? I guess many people would say: God’s ways are mysterious. But isn’t that just saying what I just said? I.e., that being is finally inexplicable? No, I haven’t tried the meds yet…

And I don’t see how naturalistic explanations detract from the general inexplicability and miraculousness of it all. With regard to any regularities in nature that we uncover, we’re really just describing WHAT already IS. We’re not accounting for the sheer presence of a single thing. We’re running along after the facts and noticing them. And our being here to chase after facts to notice and describe them is yet another unaccountable fact in the HAPPENING WORLD.

Leave me alone about the meds. I said I didn’t yet.

Spring

2005-04-17T14:07:00.000-04:00

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

G. M. Hopkins

Faith & Politics: A Rebuttal

2005-04-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

Intro

The 4/14 “Grinding Axes” post, which focused on the kind of language employed by Rev. Swank, pastor of New Hope Church, brings up the question of faith’s involvement with politics. The language of today’s clerics sometimes turns shrill and even malicious-sounding when they talk politics from the pulpit. Which raises the question: is that what the pulpit is for?

Although Rev. Swank is politically conservative, I should point out that I’ve noted shrill and angry sounding liberals too. However, so far I can’t say as I’ve run into liberal clerics using divisive and disrespectful language to promote liberal political views. This may well be an oversight on my part; or perhaps religious conservatives are indeed more likely to speak and write in disrespectful terms. I don’t know. If someone can point me to a liberal equivalent of Rev. Swank, I’ll gladly post it as another example.

A Curious Topic

When I visited Rev. Swank’s site yesterday, I found a lead article entitled, “Mass Circumcision: Will the World Grow Up?” It focused on circumcision among Moroccans. Most Moroccans are Muslim. I have the feeling this isn’t an article that would be popular in the Islamic world, particularly Morocco. In brief, the Reverend informs us that thousands of male Moroccans have been circumcised to show solidarity with the king and his two-year-old son, who was recently circumcised.

From the title of the article, and the incredulity expressed in the opening line - “It’s true…” - Rev. Swank apparently takes a dim view of the Moroccan circumcisions. My best guess about the point of his article is that he is against what he seems to be implying is the lockstep mentality of Moroccans under their king.

Certainly there are comic possibilities here. For starters, there’s the curious nature of Swank’s subject matter. Then there’s the fact that a two-minute inspection of his site makes it clear that he’s in – well, lockstep - with the Bush administration.

However, I can have no idea whether Rev. Swank has much of a sense of humor, since he hasn’t responded to my email, and quickly removes my comments from his site. So although I am sorely tempted in jocular directions, I'll assume that they would not be well received...

My Remark

The comment that I made to his site yesterday after reading the Moroccan article read:

“New Hope” – what a beautiful name for a church. And yet there is nothing very new or very hopeful about demonizing those who disagree with us or confounding religion with political ideology.

Rev. Swank’s Apparent Reply

Rev. Swank's first post today on “Conservative Posts Blog,"has an interesting title: “So America’s Founders Were Not Christian, Eh?”

This looks like a possible indirect commentary on my remark.

If you want to look at Rev. Swank’s “America's Founders” piece, you’ll find that it consists of a series of quotes illustrating the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and other founders and upholders of American democracy, were deeply religious theists and Christians.

Analysis and Rebuttal: Faith in Politics vs. Faith as Politics

I couldn’t agree more with Rev. Swank that the faith of these men entered into their politics, and in an admirable way. So did Martin Luther King Junior’s.

Yet look at the Reverend’s quotes. You’ll find that these leaders expressed their faith in terms that are passionate, broad, and personal.

And I think this is exactly the manner in which faith constructively enters the realm of action, including politics:

When it brings us personal strength and motivation.

When it moves us in a spirit of good will and humility to engage in respectful dialogue with others as full brothers, sisters, and equals.

When we recognize that God’s will is not something that we carry in our own hip pocket, but something that emerges in time as we constructively engage with the wider world.

In what sense should faith stay out of politics?

When it’s not faith. When it’s politics posing as faith by making use of a lot of God-talk. In particular:

When we identify the will of God with specific political agendas and platforms concerning which persons of good will may reasonably differ.

Even worse, when we identify it with specific planks in the platform.

Still worse, when we identify the will of God with planks that we help to install in the platform for the love of money and power.

Persons of faith have wondered how to take the “religious” football out of the hands of the far right. I’d suggest that we start by pointing to the difference between faith, and politics that masquerades as faith.

Cognitive Axes Clashing…

2005-04-15T12:31:00.000-04:00

“The power of belief to effect our perception is at its most visible when we argue. Two sides can argue forever, both amazed at the stupidity of their opposition who are apparently unable to perceive that which is obvious. The long held beliefs of each side act as filters preventing them from perceiving things which would contradict their beliefs. Their opponents arguments effectively come from another world.”

Maybe this quote from “brain in a jar” on the Kuro5hin Web site http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/7/171330/7852, points to a cognitive element behind the adult use of language when it becomes shrill, disrespectful, and starts to resemble the name-calling of childhood.

I’m sure there are emotional/psychological aspects as well…

Pastors Grinding Axes: “Extra” Post

2005-04-14T21:47:00.000-04:00

The day before yesterday I posted a comment to “The Conservative Posts Blog.” The first thing I saw was an article by J. Grant Swank, Jr., Pastor of New Hope Church. Here’s a sample.

"The anti-Bush cry coming from those liberals in America as well as pro-killers international in New Iraq call for the Coalition to fold up rank and leave yesterday."

My April 13, 2005 comment, which I couldn’t find today when I tried to check up on how it was doing, was titled “Unhelpful,” and read,

As a pastor, how do you reconcile this sort of inflammatory and divisive commentary with your relationship to Jesus? Surely your remarks are not intended to heal.

I’ve emailed the following to Rev. Swank, who provides his email address on his site.

When ministers are unwilling to engage in civil discourse, they fall short of secular society’s best standards and fall away from the higher standards to which their faith calls them.

I also provided him a link to this blog.

Salvation for Christians Only? Diabloging with Phil re. 4/12’s Post

2005-04-14T14:18:00.000-04:00

Phil’s abbreviated remarks, in blue, are from his comment to the post titled, “For Christians Only?”

Your statement concerning the implications of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, "It has Jesus Christ coming into the world to save Christians", is not entirely accurate.Jesus himself declared that the sick are not in need of a doctor. In other words, He did not come to save those who already live according to God's standard since they do not need saving … So, to say that Jesus came to save Christians is obviously contradictory.

That makes perfect sense to me – that Jesus’ aim couldn’t be so parochial as to save Christians only. It may be that I only have the idea that a lot of Christians may think otherwise from Christian bloggers who may be outside the mainstream.

I’m quite sure that the most recent Catholic Vatican Council that met in the 1960s made it clear that non Catholics – non Christians? – can be saved. I do know that there has been a strong ecumenical movement within Catholicism in recent decades, so this would be consistent with that development.

If I may ask, Phil, are you expressing your own view here, or do you feel pretty confident that church doctrine for all or most Protestant denominations would agree with us about salvation not being reserved for Christians?

…You are correct in your indirect reference to the New Testament teaching that such faith is only available to those to whom God himself reveals Jesus as the Messiah. It doesn't stop there though, because according to the Bible, it is God's will that all would know this truth and be saved.

Wouldn’t this head us back toward the idea that you have to be Christian to be saved? It sounds as though what makes Christianity universal is that in the end, we all become Christians.

To me, a problem here is that a lot of Muslims, for example, think the same thing about Islam. And between now and the end of time, we have to live with each other. How do we do that, without conflict, if people continue regarding their own belief system as, in a word, best?

…I would pose a question back to you: If God is true, and not just some invention of man, then should the sincere beliefs of individuals, or even a society, influence His standards? That kind of god is one in which I would have difficulty believing.

Good question, and a really hard one. Something tells me a lot of five and six hundred page theology books have been written to try and answer it…

What is there about faith that is timeless, and what things change along with what we may justifiably perceive as growth in our understanding? Certainly religious institutions grow and change. We wouldn’t think of condemning anyone today for believing that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around!

I do think that when positive changes occur, as when Luther kicked off of the Reformation, it happens when individuals sincerely grapple with large questions. Not everyone who sincerely grapples with the religious issues of their day is as gifted as Luther was. So sometimes sincere grappling produces pretty idiosyncratic or maybe flaky thoughts. But once in a while you get a Luther – or, long before that, a St. Paul – and a lot of people end up agreeing. And change occurs.

A development in recent decades that looks to me like it could become significant is the West’s increasing awareness of Eastern religions. In particular, I’m struck by what I view, and have experienced, as a real synergy between Christianity and Buddhism. The Eightfold Path could hardly be more compatible with Christian morality. In a nutshell, while Christianity exhorts us to seek perfection, Buddhism provides a lot of practical pointers for how to go about it.

Even more intriguing to me is the fact that Buddha does not ever mention God. Some say this means that Buddhism isn’t a religion. To me, a more satisfactory explanation is that in a simple and profound manner, Buddha’s silence gives Eastern expression to the fundamental Judeo-Christian teaching about God’s ineffability. Further evidence of this is that Eastern and Western practices of contemplation or meditation, and the experiences they engender, appear to be virtually identical.

Justification by the Work of Faith -?

2005-04-13T12:34:00.000-04:00

Probably due to my Catholic upbringing, I never thought that much about “justification by faith” until I got blogeoned over the head with it by my own blog these past couple days. And I realize that I don’t understand it.

In divinity school, I do remember being impressed with accounts of Luther’s struggle to arrive at his idea that good works do nothing to help bring us salvation. We are “justified by faith alone,” not works. His struggle and insight were authentic. They were meaningful not only to him, but initiated much needed church reforms. The best known of the “works” that Luther objected to was paying money to the church to supposedly buy your way into heaven with “indulgences.”

But Luther defined works very broadly. Nothing we can do on earth that’s positive and right increases our chances of salvation one iota. We are all sinful to the core, and for our salvation depend utterly on Jesus having given up his life for our sins. It is only through faith in him – which comes to us as a freely given gift of God – that we are saved. Have I got that right?

I just don’t see how this – works. First of all, how is faith itself not a work?

It’s true that conversion experiences often arrive like a grace coming out of nowhere. But for that experience to grow into a genuine faith commitment rather than turn into just a pleasant memory requires – well, work. Our way of life has to change, our thinking, how we strive to relate to others.

Second, Luther’s own experience vividly illustrates the tremendous personal struggle, at both conscious and unconscious levels, that precedes conversion experiences. Although they arrive unexpectedly and their nature may astound us, we come to them through arduous seeking – or sometimes, at least on a conscious level, still more arduous attempts to escape issues of the spirit. Isn’t this not only work, but terribly important work? (See William James’ classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, on “the twice-born type,” for more on this subject.)

On the other hand, if in fact faith is somehow a sheer God-given grace that takes place with no relation to the work of spiritual seeking and struggle, doesn’t that make matters worse? How and why would God judge us by his actions?

For Christians Only?

2005-04-12T18:29:00.000-04:00

The paragraph below is a comment made by “Anonymous” to my previous post, which ended with the question: Is there any substantive difference between a good Christian and a good atheist? Clearly Anonymous inferred that my question was rhetorical, and Anonymous is right about that. I appreciate Anonymous’ thoughtful and diverging point of view:

There is a significant difference {between a good Christian and a good atheist}. Since, even as you acknowledged, neither is "good" (everyone is flawed), then the difference is what makes a Christian "good". The "goodness" of a Christian is Jesus Christ. In other words, Christians are not judged by God based on their own goodness, but rather on the goodness of Jesus Christ. This is what Luther was explaining in the quote you referenced. Christians are justified by faith in the sufficiency of Jesus' propitiation on their behalf.

Anonymous’ explanation rings a lot of bells. It’s been a while since divinity school, but I believe he or she has given us a concise and accurate rendition of Luther’s concept. (Readers, of course, feel free to agree or take exception.)

Martin Luther, as I recall, came to his experience and concept of faith in reaction to a couple of things. First, there was the massive corruption of the Catholic Church of his time, including the sale of indulges – in a nutshell, pay money to the church and erase your sins. Secondly, as a monk Luther had put tremendous personal effort into trying to perfect himself, but couldn’t help but notice he still wasn’t perfect. You might say he was receiving an A+ on his monk report card, but knew that nobody really deserved such a high mark. In its time and context, this was truly a breath of fresh air and the start not only of the Protestant Reformation, but also the Catholic Counter Reformation – basically, Catholics recognized that they needed to clean up their act.

Today, however, none of us live in a Christian world. The world is a big, diverse place. And to hold onto an idea that Christians are justified or saved by their belief in Jesus as the Christ seems to me to have far reaching implications. It has Jesus Christ coming into the world to save Christians, with God’s negative judgment falling on persons to whom God’s Word in the person of Jesus Christ has in fact not been revealed.

For something to be revealed means that it must be seen as well as shown. Many people, even persons who have sincerely desired to believe in Jesus as their Savior, are unable in good conscience to do so. Who, after all, would not desire Jesus’ Second Coming and the ultimate triumph of goodness and life?

The only way I wouldn’t want it is if it were reserved for Christians, and if God is a Being whose wrathful judgment is directed at persons who honestly and sincerely believe that the New Testament was written in the same manner as other great books, and that Jesus was simply a good and enlightened man with an important message.

That this outlook on Jesus and the New Testament - of all possible human thoughts and behaviors - is what God would reserve his wrath for, is itself morally objectionable. Although many passages from the Bible do place stress upon belief, I know many others that stress love, inclusion, and even universality. There are even lines about seeking perfection. Maybe the young Luther just overestimated his or anyone’s potential to achieve this as a goal. Yet this does not invalidate seeking perfection as a process and direction.

The Bible is the Bible. It was written by many authors and contains many streams of thought that sometimes diverge in significant respects. More than most books, we have to engage our own hearts and minds with the text in order to arrive at an understanding of its message.

As Christians, I doubt that staking our souls on a theology of “us” vs. “them” is the most promising way ahead. Surely it is possible to begin reading Christianity in a manner that connects it with the wider world to which all of us belong.

Is Belief in Good Atheists Justified?

2005-04-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

People argue endlessly about religion. Sometimes they kill each other over it, especially when they identify the will of God with their specific political agendas.

Fragmentation characterizes religion and spirituality today. In addition to the major religions of the world, many are turning to a wide array of alternative belief systems: Native American and Mexican, Druidism, Shamanism… And of course there are atheists and agnostics.

Western religions identify themselves strongly with belief committments. While Buddha, for example, did not speak about God or an afterlife, members of Western faiths typically have definite ideas on these matters and more. Many Western believers, without wanting a “crusade” or “clash of civilizations,” evince a strong desire to proselytize.

My sense is that proselytizers try to get us to subscribe to their version of Christianity for our own good. The implication is that if we don’t believe as they do, our souls are in danger. Unless we believe as they do, God is apt to judge us less favorably than God judges them.

This makes me wonder about a lot of things. But I think what it makes me wonder about most is why a God who created a world sufficiently ambiguous for people of good conscience to differ over whether God even exists, would judge us primarily on our beliefs about matters like the heights and depths of reality, the end of time, and the existence of God.

True, the Bible does announce itself as God’s revealed Word. And yes, some Christians tell us that its words are to be taken literally – in particular, those verses that they personally find most compelling. And yet in fact the Bible itself does not suffice to reveal to all humankind that it is God’s revealed Word. Otherwise, there would be no atheists or agnostics. They would have looked at the Bible and found it - revelatory. Just because words in print say, “This is God’s revealed Word,” does not provide anyone with certain knowledge that it is.

The issue of choice has to be raised. I have often heard fundamentalists argue that we have a choice about whether to believe as they do, with the implicit or explicit warning of divine wrath for those who don’t make what they feel is the right choice. Yet not all of us, in good conscience, are able to choose our beliefs, even if we’re told that doing so will bring us salvation.

The Ten Commandments include one against bearing false witness against others. For some of us, choosing to believe anything other than what we find truly compelling feels a lot like bearing false witness in the face of Reality or God under the broad light of our own conscience. We can’t do it. Put more simply, for some of us belief is never a real choice: what we believe is that which we find truly compelling.

I question how valuable it is to try and judge others’ souls, the quality of their being, or whether they are apt to ultimately participate in a greater life. Speaking personally, I do know that religious beliefs would be very low on my list of things I’d go by if I were to try. From what I can see, despite the attempts at proselytizing, the biggest determiner of what you believe – or, in some cases, are preoccupied with reacting against – is the belief system you happened to grow up with due to historical circumstances over which none of us had control. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most Jews, Muslims, and Christians aren’t living in China and Japan.

Martin Luther spoke of “justification by faith” and not works. We are all sinners before God and utterly depend on God’s mercy. There is nothing we can do on our own to alter our sinful status.

On the one hand, I think there is a profound truth here even for those who might not choose to render it in Luther’s language. This simple truth, but one we can easily forget, is that as human beings, we are flawed. If we are comfortable and fortunate enough, and have gone some distance in our way, we may suppose that we have spiritually “arrived.” But if we are faced with great enough adversity, we soon learn differently.

On the other hand, to return to Luther’s words: In today’s multifaceted religious and spiritual environment, which faith would justify us? I can’t imagine that it is through our adherence to any particular belief system that we find salvation rather than damnation. I can’t even imagine that what one person as against another believes about ultimate reality from a tiny planet in an ambiguous world is any indicator that that person shines brighter in the here and now with a moral or divine spark.

For me, far more meaningful measures of how someone is doing spiritually and morally, is how they treat their family and friends, how they do their jobs - how they speak and conduct themselves in relation to people generally in all the business of life large and small. In a word, their works are indeed what give me knowledge. Knowledge not of whether they are eternally damned or saved, but a working knowledge of what I think I can expect from them. This is also the chief determiner of how much or little I admire them.

Is there any substantive difference between a good Christian and a good atheist?

Social Security

2005-04-09T13:25:00.000-04:00

I’m not planning for this blog to take a political turn, but I see that occasionally something may come up that relates to something central to spirituality and religion.

So I’m quoting myself on the social security issue. Below is a slightly abridged comment I made to Matthew’s blog, specifically his, “Your Tax Dollars At Work” post on www.liberaljesus.blogspot.com.

The social security issue is a good example of how spiritual life inevitably intersects at certain points with political matters. That’s because authentic spirituality is inconceivable apart from creating in us a concern for the wider good and larger world. Christians believe that this is what Jesus gave up his life for. Any enlightened perspective from within any religious context includes concern for the larger community.

Hi Matthew -

I just hope President Bush doesn't manage to scare the twenty-somethings out of social security. Privatized social "security" is not security. The idea behind the program is to provide everyone with a guaranteed minimum safety net, not an opportunity to build wealth.

The wealthy don’t need social security. So it may look to them like a good program to cut back on and save up our tax dollars for funding those preemptive wars that create good will toward us throughout the world, helping to keep America safe.

But for most Americans, the basic premise of a financial safety net, or "defined benefit," is as sound today as it was when social security was established under FDR.

Paul

God’s Grandeur

2005-04-08T14:14:00.000-04:00

by G.M. Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

What can I say – I was an English major. So I may post the occasional religious or spiritual poem. Hopkins was a monk writing in the late 19th century. A few phrases/words need explanation: “reck” meant obey, “foil” meant sword, "trade" meant commerce, and “the ooze of oil crushed” seems to refer to the appearance of oil after being pressed from grapes or olives, I forget which.

I love how thick with sound the poem is. The music of our language, with no need for accompaniment by bells, whistles, or percussion instruments, is largely missing from poetry today. Frankly, I think it’s because we no longer have the chops. Just my opinion, but I think poetry is pretty much a lost art. I think it’s why practically the only people reading contemporary poets are aspiring contemporary poets.

Hopkins died in his forties - early forties, as I recall. His dying request to his best friend was that he burn his poetry. Hopkins felt that he had sinned by celebrating nature too much – creation, in distinction from the Creator.

What do you make of that?

Blogs Left and Right: Is Spiritual Dialogue Possible?

2005-04-07T15:14:00.000-04:00

I’m new to blogging, but from what I’ve seen so far, religion and spirituality blogs tend to be either “progressive” or “conservative.” I’ve noticed only a small number of conservative commentators on progressive blogs, and it has seemed to me that conservative blogs may feature even fewer progressive commentators. In fact a couple of times, with one conservative blog, I found that my comments were never posted.

I’ve also found it hard to start discussions with conservative commentators who appear on progressive blogs. I’ve encountered tendencies to quote scripture that abate little even when I’ve tried to discuss the nature of scripture and its authority. There are a lot of biblical passages that I like too, but back and forth Bible quoting doesn’t make for a thoughtful dialogue.

Is it possible for those who believe the Bible is inerrant to step outside the box of that commitment in order to discuss matters such as whether or not the Bible is inerrant - and if so, in what sense – with those of us who don’t start out from that position? A dialogue in which people do no more than insist on their preexisting positions isn't much of a dialogue...

If religious/spiritual discussion can only take place with those who already agree with us, I think it places severe constraints on our ability to discover what we hold in common, as well as on the ability to genuinely reflect on our own positions. It’s an obstacle to achieving greater understanding of ourselves and others.

If we genuinely seek truth in any matter, a diversity of viewpoints is to be welcomed. Being able to hold open discussions is one of the benefits of living in a democracy. In fact, the refusal to look at a variety of points of view is one of those things that topple dictatorships. The dictator never challenges his own assumptions, and gets blindsided.

Will religion become an increasingly fractured “market,” with everybody retiring to their own camps to communicate only with the like-minded - increasingly alienated from members of other faiths, and from people who consider themselves “not religious?”

This would be ironic as well as unfortunate. The prevailing theory of the etymology of the word religion is that it has two sources: the Latin prefix “re,” meaning again; and the Latin word “ligare” meaning to bind together. The root meaning of religion appears to be the idea of bringing together again…

Sacramental Analysis with G-Fish and Matthew

2005-04-06T11:21:00.000-04:00

Grumblefish and Matthew commented on the April 4 Sacrament/Bass Drum post – which isn’t as peculiar as it sounds, when you read the post…

Matthew basically asks, “What’s a sacrament?” after offering, for a starting point, “something you do that deepens your experience of God.” But how, he goes on to question, do you distinguish between a sacrament and something that we do which is simply pleasant? Or, he adds, unpleasant? (Italics mine.)

I think Grumblefish points in the right direction by describing the “silent worship” meetings in which he participates. I was reminded of a three-day visit I spent at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, MA, in which silence was a big part of the Trappist 3:00 a.m. service, and the chanting was unaccompanied by musical instruments. The raised voices stood out movingly in the otherwise complete silence inside a chapel that was mostly darkened. There is something in the quality of certain positive experiences that makes them more than pleasant – that gives them the kind of significance that must have brought Matthew to start off with the idea of sacrament as something you do that deepens your experience of God.

I’d want to add the idea that sacrament contains the element of ritual. In a “found” sacrament, it’s something that we do in our own lives regularly or at least from time to time. And of course formal religious sacraments also have this repeated quality.

A remarkable feature of formal sacraments is that they are defined, as articles of faith, as acts in which we encounter God. But you can’t always “feel the grace.” Think, for example, of an infant receiving baptism in the Catholic Church. The baby probably isn’t feeling any closer to God from that holy water, although the parents may be. The fact that formal sacraments are encounters with God by definition itself gives them significance for believers.

How do we distinguish a sacrament from something we do that is unpleasant? I think that we must reserve “sacrament” for activities that impart peace or joy in order to avoid the dangers of ritual acts of comedy. Imagine, for example, if you had congregation members filing past their ministers to receive brief personal insults or mild electric shocks…

That said, very unpleasant experiences can clearly play a role in spiritual growth. Here we’re led back in the direction of dealing with suffering, as referred to in earlier posts.

Finally, there is a broader and related question: what makes any experience – and not necessarily an act that is performed regularly – “religious” or “spiritual?”

Sleeping Giant: On Comments to 3/21 “Imagine”

2005-04-03T13:35:00.000-04:00

Anonymous clearly hopes the rise of the religious right is a short-lived phenomenon. Rob, without stating his own attitude toward the RR, states that it is on the rise in the southern hemisphere. He seems to suggest that the higher birth rates there make its continued rise practically inevitable.

China is sometimes described as a “sleeping giant” in economic terms, and one that has begun to stir.

I wonder if there isn’t a spiritual giant that is still deep in slumber.

I don’t know the stats, but clearly there are large numbers of people who believe in God but are not members of the religious right. At least in the US they are not as well organized, although progressive Christians have been scrambling to catch up since the advent of President Bush’s second term.

Every world religion teaches that human nature, while flawed, is also inherently spiritual – the divine spark, the Godhead, our Buddha-nature, or however it is conceived. Since they are human, atheists and agnostics – let’s call them “secularists” for convenience – fully share in this spiritual quality.

With a lot of them this is self-evident. As far as I know, secularists do as much good in the world as people who identify themselves as religious or spiritual.

As spiritual persons, we hold a great deal in common in terms of those aspects of our inner lives that we find ourselves growing to learn are most energizing and constructive. If secularists were to occupy themselves more with acknowledging this aspect of their natures, and less with criticizing the beliefs of others, and if theists were to begin emphasizing the experiential aspects of faith more, and the belief aspects less, then a spiritual giant will have begun to stir...

I think it could be important for the giant to awaken sooner rather than later.

Judgment Day and the Long Delay

2005-04-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

Last night “Grumblefish” sent a comment to my 3/27 post titled, “Approaching Christianity with Awareness.” Grumble touched on a large number of issues, but I found one line of thought especially interesting. The relevant Grumblequotes are as follows:

“It may very well be that the chronicles of the new testament had their roots in the same sense that there's something important in front of and around me…”

He jocularly - sort of - adds:

“If you could update the Bible with a few contemporary chapters, would you… I'm a bit disturbed that, 2,000+ years later, we… find ourselves trapped by the apparent ambiguities and loopholes in the scriptures- be they Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Jewish.”

Wow. Grumblefish is grousing about something pretty major. When you look at the history of world religions, it looks like God got tired of speaking directly to humankind about 1500 years ago, if you want to go by the most recent history. (Mohammed came along 500 years after Jesus.) There may be, “the still small voice within,” but God has come out with no further major public pronouncements. What happened? Did God hang up on us 1500 or 2000 years ago? Did we stop listening? Or did the reality of life in this world somehow alter a couple millennia ago in some profound way that impedes our communication? Was there a special holy era, so to speak, that is now over and done with?

Speaking of holy eras, note that biblical scholars are certain that Jesus’ contemporaries expected the second coming to occur in their own lifetimes. Actually, it’s pretty easy to see this even without being a biblical scholar. Example: In Mark 13:30, Jesus, referring to events at the end of time states: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.” There are enough similar verses – I seem to recall one along the lines of “many of you will not yet have slept,” meaning, will not yet have died – that this isn’t an ambiguous matter. While Christians far more often cite those verses concerning the uncertainly of exactly when Judgment Day will come – “you will not know the day or hour” etc. – the New Testament’s authors frame this uncertainty in terms of the decades and not the centuries or millennia to come.

Later Christians found the verses that point to the expected imminence of the Second Coming in the first century A.D. disconcerting. After all, it’s a real problem if you’ve been telling yourself that the Bible as God’s Word can never be wrong about anything even though it was written by humans. So theologians long ago came up with the concept of “the parasouia,” which is really just a neat word for, “The Long Delay.” It isn’t a very informative idea. Frankly, it strikes me as disingenuous.

For me, honesty is the best policy, especially in a matter as profoundly consequential as faith. We can face reality without becoming extravagant sinners carousing in the secular city. We can even come to recognize that it is under the fullest possible light of truth that we are able to bring to bear on our place in this world, that our faith just glows.

Religion’s Common Ground

2005-04-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

Have you ever tried to convert someone to your religious beliefs? Proselytizing is hard work, to say the least. Most of the time it’s impossible. Believers generally stick with the basic belief traditions they grew up with, even when they change denominations.

As the world becomes one place through its technological interconnections, how will our systems of belief find mutual accommodation? Is there any way that religion and spirituality can become more a source of unity and less a source of division and conflict on the world stage?

It is hard to imagine the emergence of an amalgamation of belief, a coherent worldwide belief system embracing the Holy Trinity, Mohammed as the Seal of the Prophets – so possibly, the Holy Quartet? - reincarnation, heaven, hell, and the virginity of Mary! It is equally hard to imagine any one of our belief systems “winning,” with the whole world accepting, say, Christian or Islamic beliefs. Of course scriptures teach that at the end-time, all will be revealed – but until and unless that happens according to the specifications of one faith or another, we can expect the world between now and then to continue to contain a diversity of religious beliefs.

This is why I am so interested in the experiential dimension of religion and spirituality. East and West, whether referred to as “contemplative prayer” or “meditation,” religions around the world have long traditions of practices that are designed to leave the egotistical self behind in favor of our experience of a greater reality. To read accounts of these practices and the kinds of experiences they foster is to see that all religions share a tremendous and tremendously important common ground. Organized religion begins with founders who are thought to have had very powerful experiences of this kind.

To date, however, contemplative practices have been mostly relegated to the monastery. Institutional religion has organized itself primarily around belief systems, and around rituals that testify to our adherence to these systems of belief.

Raised Catholic, it was not until I was in my mid-twenties and met with Fr. Basil Pennington at St. Joseph’s Abbey, that I learned prayer could mean something different from “petitionary prayer!” At St. Joseph’s I found out that it is possible to enter into state of mind in relation to God that has nothing to do with asking for favors.

Theological Controversy and the Three Little Pigs

2005-03-31T11:46:00.000-05:00

Whether reading nonfiction or fiction, Christians are as capable as anyone else when it comes to noticing major themes, general tenor, and main ideas. With regard to anything but scripture, we know that this is how to discover the meaning of a text – and not by pulling out isolated passages.

Yet some of us seem to feel that we can't express our thoughts concerning our own views on society, politics, and the larger world, without basing them on scripture. This leads to a "pick and choose" approach to reading the Bible. You have a point of view; then you find some verses to support it. Seek and ye shall find. The Bible is a big book.

There are even theologians who write five or six hundred page treatises and tie themselves in heroic intellectual knots just to explain to us in detail how their view of life is supported by Bible quotes. (Divinity school was hard for me in some respects...)

To use an analogy that most of us would be familiar with: Let’s say we were to take the same approach with, “The Three Little Pigs.” I dunno... Let’s say that in the 1960s, an ancient version of the tale had turned up in the Holy Land right in the middle an early scripture scroll...

The wolf’s reference to “huffing and puffing” in his efforts to blow down the pigs’ houses would have instantly become a source of topical controversy and concern. Christians who smoked would have immediately cited these passages as references in support of smoking, pointing to the wolf’s larger than average lung capacity in blowing down the houses of straw and sticks. Many would have continued holding to this view even after the scientific findings came out, since God himself chose the words “huff” and “puff” at the same time that He gave the wolf the gift of a great pair of lungs.

Non-smoking Christians would have pointed to how the wolf’s pulmonary behaviors were destructive and self-defeating in the end, supporting the view that smoking is bad for us. After decades of inquiry and debate, various schools of thought, and eventually splinter groups, would have developed: the schism of Huff and Puff, the anti-wolf society, the Brickests, who would insist on living in structures of brick and try to insist that everyone else do the same…

As thoughtful Christians, we can do better than read scripture like it was crucified on the cross of its canonization, and is nailed there still. Reading the New Testament this way turns it into a legalistic document – and turns us into the new Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus Christ himself would have spoken out against this sort of reading of the books that were written about his ministry.

Suffering: A Personal Note

2005-03-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

In my recent “Cross to Bear…” post, I discussed the suffering of a blogger named John and referred to the Book of Job and its account of suffering.

Here I’d like to point briefly to my own experience of suffering, which happens to be featured on Matthew Holt’s excellent health care blog: http://matthewholt.typepad.com/the_health_care_blog/ See “Health Plans/Policy…” about a third of the way down the page.

Ironically, I did my Masters thesis on the Book of Job. Guess I’d advise all divinity school students against doing that. Apparently there’s a risk God will suppose you want a more thoroughgoing understanding of Job’s experience than anyone does. At least so far the roof has only figuratively and not literally caved in on my family.

Evildoers

2005-03-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

President Bush often refers to "evildoers." This raises a question worth looking at: Do people who commit acts that others regard as evil also view their acts as evil? Is it the case that they willingly choose evil over good?

Certainly this is the basic idea of sin that I grew up with. Given the opportunity – say, in the Garden of Eden – people will end up choosing evil over good. We’re just made that way.

And yet it’s pretty clear that some people who do evil – say, strapping on a bomb and blowing themselves up along with a lot of other people – are badly misguided. Many of them are very young. What they actually believe is that they are the ones fighting evil. They even have a lot of people who agree with them.

In Buddhism, human misdeeds are seen as arising from ignorance. Buddhists seek enlightenment rather than redemption from willful sin.

What do you think? Maybe Hitler is a good (so to speak) example to consider. To put it mildly, human behavior doesn’t get much worse than this. Was Hitler tremendously ignorant and even deluded, preventing him from recognizing what might have made for his own happiness and constructive contribution to the world? Or did he first recognize his potential for true happiness and contribution-making, and then say, “The hell with it…”

A Cross to Bear and One to Set Down

2005-03-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

This post is in response to a post I read entitled, “How Do You Keep Faith?” on “John33’s” blog. I found it on the Progressive Christian Blogger Network, http://pcbn.smartcampaigns.com/node/170 - this is a direct link to John’s post. In sum, John suffered a serious spinal injury that left him disabled. Surgery only increased the pain. Six years after the injury, the impacts on his personal, family, and financial life – and on his faith – have been devastating.

One major theme that I noticed in John’s post is that he feels guilty in relation to his family. He can no longer be the healthy, playful Dad he used to be with his children, or financially provide for his family the way he used to. It looks like they will have to sell their house to pay the bills.

Bodily harm, to ourselves or those we love, is as real as suffering gets. How do we reconcile faith with the reality of terrible personal suffering?

Many of those fortunate enough to lead comfortable lives reconcile it with some version of, “It can’t happen to me.” But of course it can. Accidents and disease-onsets happen everyday – to the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. And old age that becomes advanced enough brings anyone pain, loss of mobility, physical fragility – the sorts of things that some of us are brought face-to-face with in earlier years.

I would like to say to John, and I don’t know whether he will read this: John, you are bearing two crosses. There is the cross of what has happened to you physically, and its unavoidable impacts on the lives of you and your family. And there is a cross that you have picked up along the way. One big part of that cross is feeling badly or guilty about the things that you can no longer do to that once added to your family’s happiness and support.

It disturbs you greatly that you are unable to help your loved ones as much as you did before. But my guess is that this is not what bothers them most. My guess is that what bothers them most is being unable to help you.

There are things that we hold onto that we think are mainly for the sake of others, but in reality are mainly for ourselves. We suffer, and so we feel that we have done something wrong. We add to our burden in a way that turns it into a punishment.

The Book of Job in the Old Testament focuses on someone who did nothing wrong, yet suffered greatly. By the way, the “happy ending” was tacked on centuries later by a different author – who, I think it’s safe to say, did not have the life-experience of the person who authored the rest of the book.

Approaching Christianity with Awareness

2005-03-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

I consider myself profoundly as well as superficially Christian. In the sense that I am profoundly Christian, I am also profoundly Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and human. I am superficially Christian in the sense that this is the tradition in which I happen to have been raised. To date, I feel that no institution has fully embraced the broad and inclusive heart of Christianity.

One thing affecting my approach to faith is awareness of the basic facts concerning how the New Testament came to be written: for example, its basis in oral traditions about Jesus that circulated for several decades after his death. Persons who never met Jesus during his lifetime went on to put their understandings of these traditions into writing. Except for Paul, who also did not meet Jesus during his lifetime, the authors of the various books of the New Testament are anonymous early Christians.

To paraphrase Paul, we see the historical figure of Jesus through a glass darkly. We view him through that prism of others’ interpretations that is represented by the New Testament. We go on to interpret this accretion of interpretation in our own ways.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

2005-03-22T11:32:00.000-05:00

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

***

I loved this hauntingly beautiful poem from the moment I read it. If others have spiritual/religious poems they especially like and want to send them, maybe I can start a "poem of the month" feature.

Imagine

2005-03-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

A critical event in transforming Christianity from a minor Jewish sect into a world religion was St. Paul’s decision to set aside Jewish laws concerning diet and circumcision, and invite non-Jews as well as Jews into the faith. Paul recognized that despite their value for Jewish tradition, these customs were secondary to the heart of the Word that he believed was universal.

What if Christians of every denomination, and Christianity as a whole, were to set aside its view of itself as absolutely right in its belief system? What if Christians rose up to declare to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews: our beliefs are in no sense better than yours? We are in no way more righteous or justified than you? What if Christians were to fully acknowledge members of other religions as brothers, sisters - full equals?

It will never happen in my lifetime. But until then, I think that the great heart of the Word that Jesus strove to bring into this world will be little understood, much less fully revealed.

Gay Marriage/Rights

2005-03-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

Since it’s so much in the news, I thought I’d begin with this. To me, it’s as clear-cut as any issue touching on religion and morality gets.

My thoughts are as follows:

1. The idea that we “choose” our sexuality is patently false. It simply doesn’t correspond to the facts of human sexual development.

I happen to be heterosexual. For the life of me, I can’t remember that magic moment when I looked around at the boys and the girls in class and “decided” to be attracted to the girls.

2. The idea that it’s okay to be gay, as long as you don’t act on it, asks the gay community as a whole to practice celibacy. A simple enough request, I guess. And yet very few individual human beings are able to do this, let alone three quarters of a gajillion. (I made up that number.) It’s okay to be gay, just don’t act that way, is a hypocritical injunction.

3. The idea that allowing homosexuals the legal benefits and dignities of rite and ceremony will suddenly make homosexuality so attractive that we heterosexuals will be unable to resist, resulting in the collapse of the family – this should really be a joke instead of an argument. I guess it already is, now that I think about that Seinfeld episode. Let’s face it. We have a good “team.” And it’s very hard to get people to switch teams…

4. The “slippery slope” is another joke in argument-drag, so to speak. The “idea” behind this is that if we give gay unions legitimacy, then people will clamor for other forms of marital union: multiple spouses, marriage to uncles and aunts, perhaps triads composed of a human, a pet, and a familiar household object. As you can see, it is indeed a slope that is slippery, if highly imaginative.

People are already getting together in the ways they want to. According full legal stature and respect to gay couples will not result in more couplings of relatives, or a big push for giving lower primates who are wedded to human beings “special rights.”

5. Nothing in reason or experience argues against full legitimization of gay couples. Quoting the Bible doesn’t work either. Selectively taking some verses literally but not others, is a misreading of scripture. For more on this, see my 3/31 post titled, "Theological Controversy..." More succinctly, consider this: The Bible says, “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out” – but despite endless church scandals, few ministers or priests seem to be missing any offending body parts.

If you think I’m wrong, tell me why. If you think I’m right: Any thoughts on what’s really behind opposition to gay marriage on the part of a significant number of heterosexuals?

Why a spiritual diablog?

2005-03-13T15:01:00.000-05:00

I am a strong proponent not only of ecumenicalism – the seeking of common ground and dialogue among members of different denominations and faiths – but of what might be called pan-ecumenicalism. I am all in favor of including atheists and agnostics in the discussion.

Why? Because we’re all human and have to live together on this much too conflict-ridden planet. Some of us sincerely believe in the existence of God and heaven. Some of us sincerely don’t. Some of us sincerely don’t know what to think, and others of us have begun exploring spiritual alternatives to the beliefs we grew up with.

This much is certain: there is no sane and caring human being who is actually hostile to the idea of life as meaningful, or the hope of universal peace and joy. Good people everywhere, believers and nonbelievers alike, are united by what we aspire to – or what grieves us because we believe it is impossible. If you are sincere, then your thoughts are welcome here, whatever they may be.

Blogs that are disrespectful of the positions of others will not be posted. And while everyone’s entitled to an opinion, if that’s all you’ve got, think out your reasons for having it before trying to post, or it won’t get posted. “Well, that’s just my opinion and I’m entitled to it,” does not make for a point of entry into any form of discussion or make way for any meeting of minds.

I would like this blog to be a small force for unity in a religious world that has become at least as fractured and divisive as it has ever been historically. I would like the focus to be at least as much on noticing what unites us as what divides us.